


The Black Sea | The Punisher

by AChesireSmile



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher (Fandom), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Anti-Hero, Flashbacks, Galatea has a shit ton of baggage, Galatea's backstory is connected to a lot of other stuff, Gen, Karen Page is the most beautiful person to ever exist, Matt Murdock is a terrible liar, Memory Loss, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Vigilantism, but who doesn't, little bit of pain and suffering for both Frank and Galatea, read closely and find some hints about the avengers, the slowest fucking burn to exist, this story is getting longer than I originally thought it would be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2019-10-14 11:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 78,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17508143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AChesireSmile/pseuds/AChesireSmile
Summary: She has more than just a few skeletons in her closet.She's a walking contradiction of sweet lies and dark truths. She has lived as both hero and villain, victim and vigilante, warrior and soldier. With the past shadowing behind her, Galatea Winters is doing her damned best to live her life in Hell's Kitchen.Even if it manages to catch back up to her, she will eventually leave it behind her once again.Just throw in a stranger with memory problems that decide to move in across the hall from Galatea and the phenomenon that follows lead to a cataclysm of chain events that start unravelling untold secrets of the Kitchen.





	1. Daybreaker

**A woman is on her bloody, raw knees on the rough ground as she clung hopelessly upon a dying man bleeding out.**

**Her harrowing scream should be earth-shattering, sky-cleaving, cosmos-riving. And yet, it fell on deaf ears of the careening crowds. There is nothing but a rushing silence, a head swaying, ringing-like static in the air. The silence is like before electricity would form up above and strike down upon the ground as lightning or thunder.**

**She does not stop screaming, breath-taking, heart-shattering, soul-sundering. Her hands are covered in his blood, her neck burns and the world does not listen to her as the crowds fall or flee.**

… … … … … …………….

            An attack of a small paw to her face is how she usually wakes up nowadays.

            First, the paw took to smooshing down at her neck, then one to her cheek, a small graze of a claw to the tip of her nose. And then comes the yowl of a feline’s hunger, usually followed by a tap, tap, tapping to the middle of her brow. A smile found its way to her mouth, she hummed slightly as acknowledgement and the attacking paw only continued with more vigor.

            The woman opened her eyes and is greeted with the visage of round emerald feline eyes staring back at her. She hummed again, sleepily. She realizes that the caressing fingers of the night sky still lingers in her bedroom along with the artificial streetlights that shimmer along her bedroom walls.

            The cat meowed again in answer, it smooshed a paw on her chest as motivation to heave herself up into a sitting position. She rubbed at her crusted eyes, playfully glared as the Aegean cat that pawed oh-so lovingly at the woman, seeking affection and, of course, _food_.

            Her clock read 4 A.M. She squinted at it, particularly not fond of waking up earlier than most of the city of the restless souls that inhabit it. But she made no move to go back to sleep.

            Hunter meowed again, which only earned him having her stick her tongue out at him. Greedy little thing, this cat had a bottomless pit for a stomach and a penchant for knowing how to get his way, regardless of her firm schedule of feeding times.

            “Yeah, yeah, I know what you want, Hunter. You should behave more like Shadow, you gluttonous furball…”

            The other Aegean cat called Shadow merely flicked her smooth tail as her ghostly pale blue eyes fixated themselves on the woman. That particular feline always knew when she had been addressed. Her soft purring indicated a good mood for the day. Well, usually it was a good omen— from previous experiences. Shadow’s omens never failed the woman before.

            Galatea wistfully smiled as she rubbed the chubby fluff of Hunter’s gray head. His chest of ebony rose with excited purring whilst his white socked feet carried him gracefully after her for more petting when she moved to the edge of her bed. The soft fleece blankets and fluffed pillows beckoned her so sweetly, but she already knew the morning was not for any more sleep today.

            Galatea planted her toes first, her soles afterwards, onto the carpet of neutral beige, ruffling her unbound hair with a silent yawn. She recently just cut the thick, wavy locks, saying good bye to heavy buns that gave her headaches and ponytails that whipped her in the face during her runs. She thought it freeing when she had followed the advice of a friend, at first.

            Now, she winced with the dawning realization that she now must learn to deal with the mass of inky hair that was wavy enough to become curls. It all depends on the weather or just out of pure, natural spite— she couldn’t win with her hair. Ever.

            She sighs forlornly as she pushes herself off the bed, leaving the bedroom to head for the small kitchen just past her small living room area. The woman sneezed the instant her already chilled feet touched the freezing tiles of her kitchen floor. She always told herself to get some slippers, but she always forgot to buy them. The procrastination has been lasting for nearly two full years. It has been two years since she has moved to Hell’s Kitchen of Manhattan, New York.

            And she wished for a little bit more out of Hell’s Kitchen.

            Hunter meows greedily, meadow green eyes shining with renewed vigor as he follows after the woman and urges her to move more swiftly at the task in hand. Shadow silently pawed after the two, her tail swishing nonchalantly and slunk off to the kitchen window, in favor of bird watching.

            Shadow’s food bowl is in the bedroom, hidden in the bathroom. Luckily, Hunter only cared for the food Galatea would serve in the kitchen. The woman bent with her knees to lay the bowl on the small cat mat she bought to keep his food from being spread too far. He is a messy eater, after all.

            Hunter is already eating out of the bowl by the time the short woman’s legs carried her back to her bedroom. Galatea steadily removes the sleeping clothes of shorts and a t-shirt far too baggy to be hers. She turns on the shower before her underwear is taken off as well, steam does not form until after she gathers her clothing attire for the day from the walk-in closet.

            After the steam rises to the ceiling of her mural-painted bathroom, she slips in and relished in the scalding spray of well-pressured water. With her usual habitual routine, she has her hair washed thoroughly and she merely relaxes her body under the heat with closed eyes.

            She had to leave the heat to eat at the diner, despite her wish to remain at home. A friend would be there for breakfast, she promised to be there, after all…

… … … … … …………….

            Hell’s Kitchen is like the rest of New York, never resting and always thrumming with human life. So mundane, so constant and yet ever-changing with development of future technology and laws and politics and societal norms. The list went on forever and then some. Not that Galatea gave much thought to it as it never concerned her personally.

            And yet, somehow, there are never enough _taxis_ to hail for a ride. Fan-fucking-tastic.

            A run would not kill Galatea Winters though, the diner is only some or several blocks away. She snatches a scarf from her coat rack before a quick goodbye to her cats. The city awaited her, it welcomes her with a blast of clamoring noise and overwhelming smell as she steps onto the streets.

            She merges with the rest of the morning crowds to make way to the diner, fluidly weaving through the people in her running pace.

            Galatea huffed, a small puff of heated air visible in the chilled air, her legs not at all fatigued as she ventured to the front of the diner. The establishment is washed in a pleasant blue lighting and the door space is warm as she enters it. Before opening the second set of doors she shoved her earbuds into her leather jacket’s pocket and her short legs briskly move to the register planted on the bar’s countertop.

            Her full lips curve up at a woman who yelled orders at the man residing in the kitchen. Betty, Galatea’s favorite waitress, turned and stopped as she landed her sight on the woman in the leather jacket.

            Galatea waved her fingers before leaning on the countertop with her forearm, “‘Allo there, Betty. There a booth for lil’ ol’ me?”

            A wink inspired Betty to glide forward, a joyous smile on her wrinkled face.

            The plump lady whose liveliness always brought a comforting warmth to the woman in the leather jacket. It reminds her of the good of the world in its oftentimes bitter, unknown ways. Even though Betty was beginning to gray with age, she still packed a sassy, reinvigorating personality in that short stature. It managed to have Galatea only smile wider and wider with each visit, and to eat a meal at the diner, of course.

            “Well, well, if it isn’t the goddess herself— back from that vacation you took from those double shifts, arresting people and all. Get your backside in a booth and let good ol’ Jerard cook you up something good. You look like you’ve lost weight, girl, we’ll need to fatten you back up!”

            The laughter following had Galatea only nod, a wide smile on her face. Betty is always just so jovial, and it filled a small, deeply hidden spot in her heart.

            Galatea pushed the thoughts of a falling, far away country and what had occurred to save a certain silver haired man’s life. To have lost weight is not a surprising thing, considering the condition she put herself in when she did _what_ she did a month ago.

            With a small flourish of her wrist, she relinquishes the choices to Betty with a confirming hum, “‘Course, can’t pass up the ol’ man’s cookin’. I’ll take the French toast and the usual drink, Betty.”

            A crowing tall tale sounds off from Betty to Jerard in the kitchen window and the woman in the leather jacket strolled to find a comfortable seat in the booth section. A full view of who could enter the diner— Galatea sat herself down and waited. She leaned on her propped elbow and watched out the large window, her gray brown eyes seeking a familiar mop of brunet hair and round, tinted glasses.

            She clucked her tongue in distaste as she could see the visible smog in the street of the Kitchen. This city never had a day of clear air or streets, she continued her vigilant waiting and tried to block out the outside noise. Her eyebrows peaked slightly as she noticed a tall figure at the corner of the diner, even with the distance; she can see the assessing, apprehensive eyes are aimed at the diner.

            Her lip twitched in amusement. The man is looking up at the neon sign of the diner’s name, taking it all in and but is hesitant in going in.

            “Now, that’s not suspicious, at all…”

            Betty came to serve Galatea her mocha cappuccino, a small stick of chocolate floating on top and most certainly, no _foam_ taking up a third of the cup’s worth. Betty never let that shit come like the plague to this diner and Galatea always got the best damn cap on the block.

            “Probably trying to weigh the chance of good coffee, Betty. There is no need to be wary,” Galatea hummed out as both women watched the man drift slowly, closer and closer to the diner’s door.

            “Well, he’s awful handsome, considering from the rest of the men in this city.”

            Betty earned a bemused chortle from Galatea before she wistfully hummed out, “Just make sure he gets warmed up with whatever coffee he prefers, Betty. It’s a cold front out there.”

            Galatea taps at her nose, as if it was a trademark secret for knowing the weather the way she did. Betty guides her hip to her hand, tilting her head in amusement as she snorts. The older woman took to notice on how the woman in the leather jacket avoided the comment of the man’s attractiveness.

            “Will do, will do.”

            The mystery man stopped when Matthew Murdock passed him to enter the diner.

            His cane would flick at corners in the usual zigzag pattern. Once he found the door in his blind glory, he hurriedly entered into the warmth of the diner. He is shivering, blowing into his hands to chase away the slight chill before he begins to enter the diner, cane still flicking at corners to determine his path through the diner.

            “I’ll leave you to your young friend, goddess. Call me when ya’ want a refill,” Betty practically skipped away from the booth.

            Galatea only observed Matt Murdock’s smooth swagger. He heard Betty’s words and knew how to pinpoint the other woman’s resting location. Matthew Murdock is a man of many things. And Galatea Winters is not at all fooled by his _blind act_ as he leisurely approached her booth.

            To others, he would appear hesitant to make another step, but Galatea already knew better.

            He had caught a falling glass of water, right in front of her, just a week after being first acquainted with him, and she _knew_. Blind, sure, but she knew that people can adapt. And Matt did so with his remaining senses. He played the role so well, he almost had her convinced right until he had slipped up with the glass of water.

            She had yet to figure out if he did it for kicks or just because it was easier to hide his gift.

            With his cane in hand, unbuttoning his jacket buttons, he slid into the booth seat opposite of her own and settled in with a sigh. He retracts the cane into the small portable version and pockets it.

            “Morning, Gaia.” He ‘looked’ to her mocha cappuccino and smiled cheekily.

            His husky voice, smooth and charming in the way that is Matt specifically, greeted the woman. She could smell the iron from his skin. She scrunched up her nose and did not smile back. Her half guess on what he does during the night is spot on. Not that she ever voiced it to him. She had found it amusing, even if it could possibly bite her in the ass, considering her own career.

            Betty slid two plates’ worth of powdered, buttery french toast to Galatea. The woman in leather nodded her thanks and waited until the aging woman is out of earshot. Matt knows that Galatea is looking to him now, taking in the small bruise highlighting his cheekbone and the smell of iron is enough to know more than he would have liked.

            He knew that with his hearing, Galatea’s nose is what she had an advantage in.

            “You look like shit, Murdock. Got beat around, huh?”

            She fastened her observant eyes upon him, watching him gulp out in his nervous habit of unknowingly revealing his terrible lying skills. He really is a terrible liar; a child would be able to see right through him. She only began to scarf down her food, not bothering to want to hear his excuse of hitting his face his apartment door this morning and the day before.

            But what had her eye twitching: “Come on, Gaia, it isn’t like you would not have done it.”

His assumption of her did not faze her.

            The nickname, Gaia, is what makes a tick to darken her mood. That moniker left a bad taste in her mouth. But she already knew that there is no stopping others from giving her a sobriquet. Her given name always seemed off tune, no matter how it is said. It is her heritage, and nothing would ever change that— she did not care to change it.

            She has always been content with herself. But _nicknames_ , she hated them.

            “Murdock, I dislike that name.”

            She spoke, after finishing her first plate of the half dozen french toast pieces. He chuckled as she licked at her bare fingers and only frowned at his laughing smile.

            She had told him a thousand times, a _thousand_ , starting from the day he began calling her ‘Gaia’. And a thousand times, he would give what most would compliment as a charming smile that would always woo people to his side of the argument.

            But whatever, she always let the argument go. She always felt too ancient, lacking the energy to really fight about the nicknaming.

            She only started shoveling the other half dozen pieces into her mouth, barely listening to him. Though the woman came to notice a gawking child in the adjacent booth, she only winked at the little girl. That action only earned a gasping laugh and chubby hands hiding her laughing mouth.

            “Well, considering your unique endowment, I’d like to think it suits you.”

            Matt smiles absentmindedly. He acted as though this was nothing but amusing conversation between two bickering friends over the most trivial of things. Maybe it is, maybe it is not. Galatea leaves that to him— again, she felt too old.

            Galatea scowled at his words but said nothing, instead sipping her cappuccino. The scalding liquid only elated her senses with her caffeine lifeline. Her ‘heritage’ was no secret, what with her Mediterranean skin for all to see. But to Matt, it had been the underlying tone of her accent in her voice, foreign and unique to his hearing when he had first heard it at the police station.

            That had been during the time when Galatea met Karen Page for the first time, on _her_ homicide case. It has been a few weeks afterwards, but the trio had found a friend in Detective Galatea Winters, who had been the leading detective on the case. When reasonable doubt had been there, Galatea testified accordingly, as imprisoning the wrong person would not help with finding the truth about Daniel Fisher’s death.

            It seems, no one can get away from Matt’s hearing. Even if she had spent years far from her true home of Athens and then some, to try to get rid of her accent, he still heard it. She never had been so surprised at the time when the _blind_ lawyer had approached to ask about her _accent_ — something she thought long gone.

            “So… how’s your promoted job as _senior_ detective and lieutenant in the department?”

            She gazed out the windows, taking another gulp of her scorching drink as he takes pause to listen to her. Galatea could see the mystery man still reluctant on entering the diner but seeming to decide on that he is cold and hungry enough to enter the door space.

            Galatea switched the scenery to look at the fine suit piece Matt is wearing, a red handkerchief in his chest pocket and then she peers up to his tinted, round glasses.

            She never quite grasped as to why he wore those glasses. Maybe it is to distract people from looking too closely to his face, his unseeing eyes. His face held the ridiculously suave smile on his lips like he was looking at her, s _eeing_ through her. It is like he knew everything already— about her, about the city, about the people.

            The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, indeed.

            Matthew Murdock did not do _smug_ like a master of the trade— but he was coming close to it, in her opinion. Sometimes, she felt she needed to teach the lawyer a lesson. But she always allows him to the things he does because he makes a difference, unlike her.

            She sets her mug down,” Decent, quiet.”

            Matt tilted his head, ‘looking’ over as someone, the mystery man, entered the diner, finally. Galatea only took it as her sign of finishing off her drink, she slapped a tip down onto the table for lovely Betty and fluidly stood from her seat. She straightened her jacket, gently smoothed her blouse and patted her high waisted jeans from any crumbs.

            Matt mumbled as she began slipping her ear buds out from her jacket’s pocket.

            “Whatever it is you’re looking for, Matt, you will not find it with me. Leave what’s in the past, in the past. I will be taking my leave now. Take care, Murdock.”

            She guiltily ignored his frown. She ignores his imploring tone for her to just ‘please, wait a moment longer, Gaia’ and passes by the newcomer.

            The mystery man had still been standing at the entrance, she brushes against his jacket as neither had made to move away from the other when she passes by him. He is not slow and she did not feel the courtesy to give him space— most would mistake it as a dismissive or passive-aggressive power exchange.

            A wave of two saluting fingers is all that is offered as a goodbye to Betty’s questioning gaze. Galatea is out of the diner, back into the chill of the city’s streets. It makes Galatea wish for a ghost to keep her warm again, to give her the company that most would never know that she longed for.

            She hunched her shoulders. Even with the coverage of her scarf, her neck is nipped at by the nagging wind. The earbuds get shoved into her ears, effectively blocking out the chaotic noise of the city. With a deep inhale and an exhale, her warm breath made into a contrasting fog, she quickly shakes off the feeling of Matt’s unseeing eyes. She stops wishing for that ghost by her side, shakes off that bit of longing for something _more_.

            Galatea Winters shivered as she ventured off, never looking back to the kept, dark hair and brown eyes of the newcomer that followed her with slight intrigue in his squinting eyes and neutral countenance. He sits on the opposite of the diner, at the very end and keeps his head low.

            Galatea had other things to do for the day, the market would be her first stop.


	2. Newcomer

It is said that a journey never ends, because it just changes paths and it keeps going.

Galatea had learned that from a friend, so long ago. It kind of hurts to remember, to be honest. It hurts to remember the face of a friend who died whilst she still lived— it hurt to know that her friends would continue to die while she is still standing on that endless battlefield that would witness her.

Because they had said that she herself is a journey. They had said that she _changes_ things, perspective or people otherwise. She changes the path on her own will, she did not follow people. People followed her. She did not stop or begin as they all would have expected.

The path, that road that they all travel down or up or sideways? It is never-ending.

They had said that she leaves her own mark on others that she crosses their paths with, she opens the other’s eyes to that supposedly big picture that no one can quite grasp. Maybe this is how she thinks on why she can never change herself. Why she feels like she has left her mark on everything but never has been marked herself.

Her journey, the one thing she attempted to find or possibly happen upon on pure chance or coincidence, to find the start of that path. Maybe, it would start now…

A dog’s bark alerted her of its presence before the clicking of the animal’s claws scratch-scratching across the wooden floor of the apartment complex hallway could be heard. Before she could turn to face the canine, they are already circling around her.

The canine is panting and urging her with its huge eyes to give it attention and petting. Its large, slobbering tongue lolls out to the side of its jowls added a certain charm. They looked like a good pitbull, she had a feeling it is a male.

Galatea relented, having no qualms to entertain them for a few seconds longer.

She lets her bags down onto the floor next to her feet, the dog moving in accordance to leave some space between her and the groceries. She smiles at the dog, he tilts his head as his tongue licks at his jowls. He obviously wanted her attention now and so she pets the good boy with an adoring rub to its forehead.

“Well,” she clucked her tongue as the pit happily barked, “you’re certainly energetic. At least, one of us is having a good day.”

She rubbed at their forehead, the dog’s heavy head lolling to one side and to the other enthusiastically as she scratches at the ears. When he seems settled down enough, she peeks to read the pit’s tags, careful to handle the tags as she continues petting him. It read _Jack_.

“Okay, well, Jack, where’s your owner? Shouldna’ leave them behind, like you just did for a stranger to pet you.”

Her petting only encouraged the great pit to seek more attention. Jack is perking up at the call of his name, not paying mind to her halfhearted scolding. Well, that is if her absentminded talking to herself and the pit could be considered as scolding. But he does not seem mind at all, only barking excitedly.

He is a giant, muscled as his breed had been intended to be, and far too energetic just to be greeting her with such a hunger for affection and physical contact. But she thinks nothing much of it, she loved animals. She had an affinity for them, of course.

“Sorry, ma’am. He is excited for the new move-in…”

The gravelly rumble of the man’s voice set a stone plunging into her metaphorically depthless gut— she half-turned to see a tall, broad man. His brown eyes seemed familiar, but she could only gape at his stature.

What in all fucking hell?

Galatea could only continue to gape as she felt her curiosity get the better of her. This man had been built like an oak tree, sturdy and immovable and so goddamn _tall_. That is a lot of length in his legs. There is power in his step, but also an agile way to where he is able to keep his steps light in his stride.

He hunched his shoulders, as if to appear smaller in the narrow hallway, but she could see that he naturally had that masculine pride in his posture. Most men came off generally arrogant or cocky with their size and their brawn and their ‘rough around the edges’ vibe. But from this hulking man, Galatea had the sense of his humble ways, he is quiet where others would be obnoxiously loud and dangerously foreboding.

But onto a different note… this man, so well built and tall, she just could not stop staring. Something flutters across her cheek, as his own gaze is locked in with hers. It is a heat that she hopes does not show outwardly on her sun-kissed skin.

Her eyes travel up, up, up, to his nose.

Sweet christ, his nose looked like it had been broken several times over and he had never bothered to set it back straight. Or maybe, he just never had the time to do so. He must have had other worries to contend to. He seems the kind of man that most others would worry over more than he would himself. He would always be on the move wherever he is needed.

He could get shit done when it is needed.

Her attention shifts to the entirety of his face, pupils widening as gray brown eyes took to studying him. He had a strong, scruffy bearded jaw. Those deep set brown eyes felt like a scorching fire on her Mediterranean sun-kissed skin as he cautiously examined her as well. It reminds her of the sands that absorbed the heat of the sun in the heart of a desert, not blistering but more like a slow warming.

A handsome man, in his gruff, tough way. No denial there.

A brooder too, no doubt about it, as she can see something is picking up the pace and shifts in his face. He is bringing up a shield now. His broad shoulders move as well. They might entice attention from people but sets him as unapproachable, if they have half a mind to heed their instincts to keep distant.

When that impossibly long minute passes, she coughs, clearing her throat behind her a clenched hand.

“Uh,” not awkward at _all_ , do _not_ make it awkward, “sorry, not many folks as tall as you come here… tenant or visitor, either wise.”

A wonderful start, her thoughts takes that bitter turn.

This has him chuckling under his breath, raises an eyebrow in his response, “She speaks of heights, huh? _Well_ , not many as short as you, I reckon…”

But he had not been looking down at her because of _height_ , that is for damn sure. He knows it, she knows it.

And this is good, real good, because she is not the only one who is not as well versed in conversation or small talk.

She had let that all go to the snark of a genius billionaire— who does not know how to keep his infamous nicknames running rampant even as he gives world-saving speeches— and to the man with the plan— her determined, soft-spoken but authoritative blue eyed Brooklyn boy— one who she had befriended first out of the rest of the lot.

Oof, but this one.

He is a man who is standing in the hallway like some remnant of a shadow, and can talk back. This is something she can do just as well, they match so far— and this gets her on her toes. She is interested now.

And when Galatea Winters gets intrigued by something, it’s a storm to be reckoned, or so she has been told by a certain annoying billionaire genius. The new neighbor of hers observes as her full lips quirk upwards at his quip. He swallows nervously.

Jack nudges at her and she obliges with one last pet to his head. The pitbull sensed it being time to return to the man’s side.

There is no heat rearing up to her face. There is nothing but a gentle beating of her heart in her chest. There are no butterflies flitting about to her stomach or trying to escape up through her throat. She is far too old, far too drained, certainly for such things.

“Galatea,” she smiles, he curves up one of his own in response, “Winters.”

“Pete…” He tilts his head, consideration in his dark eyes, “Castiglione.”

With a twist of his wrist and with an armful of his boxes, he is more than capable of keeping a good hold, his door sways slightly to open at his ministration. He did not move, just glances to the boxes in hand and back to her, seeking permission.

She nodded, wordlessly. As interesting as it would be to see how long or how much a man of his physique could carry, it would just be rude to not let him unload.

 _Pete_ tips his chin, “Ma’am.”

He dumps those boxes just to the right of his door’s entrance. He gives them a push to make more room, indicating he has more to retrieve from somewhere else. Jack is huffing happily next to him. The pit is watching with his bright eyes.

 Galatea cannot help but wonder on if her blond, blue eyed Brooklyn boy send this dark, brooding man to antagonize her with that kind of title?

She would have to give him a call afterwards, to bite his head off. Though, it had been a while since they last talked and when she left the team behind. But above all else, she wishes she could be standing by his side— he discovered who he once thought of as lost and is rearing to scour the whole of the earth to find him from the shadows once more.

And she can not help with that search. Only because she made a different promise to the other Brooklyn boy, the one who had the power of storm clouds in his just as blue eyes. He would only come back after he finds himself and is ready to face the world again.

He would not return for years, even if it would be hurting the Brooklyn boy she cared about.

“I’m no ‘ma’am’, Pete,” she chuckles lowly under her breath.

The irony of her words would be hysterically laughable.

A bird man would tease her and make a joke out of it too, if he had been here, listening and watching this entire social interaction going down. She thinks about how she misses him, he could have her roaring in laughter within minutes, even if everyone else thought his puns and his antics were not humorous. He is a good buffer for everyone, especially for her.

Pete shrugs.

Galatea wanted him to do that again, just to watch his shoulders’ muscles in movement. There is strength and power, she could feel the tension in them. A spring so tightly coiled up, ready to be unleashed.

He mutters, looking down the hall and the other way as well, “’t’s habit, been taught that way my whole life and when I’d been in service. My mother, bless her soul, woulda’ boxed my ears in if I said anything else.”

Ah, an honorable man who had been taught to respect women— it would be so natural to him. Galatea decides that this man had definitely been sent to antagonize her.

His second round of assessing her had her smile widen. It had been a while since she found an interesting person such as him. It is settled then, as they clasped hands and shook to commemorate their new relationship as neighbors.

Galatea Winters guessed she will have to just get used to ‘ma’am’ as a new nickname.

… … … … … …………….

Of course, the slobbering beast would run off ahead.

Jack happily barks, his claws sounding off like ricocheting of metal in this narrow hallway. But why the hell the pitbull, he had picked up on the way to the new apartment, is running ahead is beyond him. The man continues on, heaving and steadying the heavy boxes in his arms.

Well, that is until he spots the woman just down the length of the hall’s pathway.

Great, just what he needed. A headache already aching at the front of his skull. He stalks down the hall and takes in the way the dog momentarily distracts this lady in her worn leather jacket and some impressive heeled boots. The mutt looked real excited to be getting all that attention while the woman looked fond of the pit.

There is a breathtaking smile on her face and she does not appear to be at all bothered by the antics of the dog.

The man twitches in the eye as he realizes that this would be his new neighbor as he nears not only his new apartment but her and the panting dog. Jack is looking up her like he wants all her attention and is succeeding. The man momentarily registers the grocery bags at her feet while his own feet is still moving to catch up with the damn mutt.

He stops at his own door and the words on his tongue leave on automatic.

“Sorry, ma’am. He’s excited for the new move-in…”

Shit, he should have thought over his words or not spoken at all because she is now looking at him. And those gray brown eyes of hers are sharp, assessing. Maybe even all seeing, with the way she seems to take all of him and already knows everything about her new neighbor.

She is peering right into his soul and something in him trembles, because goddamn, it feels like she can read him right off the bat. She knows him somehow, he thinks, because she’s taking in not just his mug but his body. It is as though she knows he has some god awful bruising on his sides, a fresh scar on the side of his head, and that his heart is a hollow thing inside him.

He shifts the heavy boxes in his arms. Despite the lady being something he would attribute to a deadly, otherworldly being, she would never want to know what is in them.

The way she is taking him in; absolutely predatory.

But she resembles nothing like a hawk with those eyes but neither does she resemble a wolf with the patient smile and sharp teeth. It feels like she is something else of much larger degree. He does not want to know what it could possibly be, this eldritch being. Women could truly be terrifying.

And she knew that too.

But he is also taking her in as she does with him. He goes from those leonine gray eyes with mixed grays dark enough to be brown, to the gentle femininity in her defined jawline and there is a sharp cuspid that she has on display as her full lips pull back in a near feral grin. Damn, that jawline is straight enough to cut a living being, but it is her teeth that could rend flesh from bone. Her tongue could be a sharp thing to render him speechless too, he just knew it.

She knows that, knows her own sense of self.

Nothing stops her, she is the one who halts everything around her. This woman stands at her fullest height, which is not much— he might end up getting a crick in his neck from how short this woman is. But still, her poise and her bearing, it is not authoritative but demanding. Whether she knew willingly or not, she turns heads.

Again, he does not want to know what this woman could possibly represent.

She coughs, breaking the line of sight first. He did not expect that.

“Uh, sorry, not many folks as tall as you come here… tenant or visitor, either wise.”

He really did not expect that, either.

But the man surprises even himself, as he finds himself chuckling underneath his breath, “She speaks of heights, huh? _Well_ , not many as short as you, I reckon…”

Hell, the last time he had laughed— he stops himself right at that thought.

This woman of impossibly small proportions starts.

She is sizing him up, he can practically taste the intrigue zinging right off her tanned skin. He ponders briefly on what nationality she could be. A European region, maybe. Somewhere close to the ocean or at a higher altitude, to warrant the earthy tone of her smooth skin.

But before he could even give a second to himself, he is blown away as she _smirks_ right at him. Those eyes sparking with an unknown feeling that has him wanting to turn right back around, whether or not Jack would follow after him. Damn dog is already getting him in trouble.

“Galatea,” she tilts her head and he cannot for the life of himself resist smiling back at her, “Winters.”

Fuck it.

“ _Pete_ ,” he lies instantly, letting that false layer wash right over him, “ _Castiglione_.”

What she does not know is for her own good.

Before allowing her to dig at him even further with those eyes of hers, he turns and opens up his door. But he does look back, looking to his boxes and then his door. He had a feeling that she would be offended if he left without at least giving her some sort of notification that he would be leaving.

She nods and that surge of relief is an honest thing that settles inside his gut. “Ma’am.”

He is pushing the boxes inside, keeping them from her and he hears her smooth timbre.

“I’m no ‘ma’am’, Pete.”

Galatea is smiling, something sad reflects at the corner of her eyes. He might as well be digging his own grave for her to send him off to whenever she is done with him.

He only shrugs, responding with a tint of some half-assed humor, “’t’s habit, been taught that way my whole life and when I’d been in service. My mother, bless her soul, woulda’ boxed my ears in if I said anything else.”

Keep your goddamn mouth shut, asshole. She does not need know any of that, of his past. She does not need to know fucking shit about him. He is just the new neighbor across the hall, a nobody— he is nothing. A flash of a face jars him, it only serves to worsen his headache.

He is looking to her now, trying to see if she picks up on that. She is smiling again, probably just amused by the fact that he has got a healthy fear for his mother.

And this woman, who so charmed the mutt in not even a second and has himself on his toes, offers her hand. He thinks that they are like doves, delicate and unscarred.

He slides his ridiculously large hand into hers. He physically dwarfs her in every aspect, height and size.

Except for this presence of hers.

She can easily overshadow him, with whatever it is that she has got in those umber eyes. And it is in an instant, but he _knows_. He knows when a soldier just grasped his hand. It is in the callouses in the pads of her fingers, it is in the thick skin that should be soft in dove hands such as hers, but it is not.

Galatea Winters is more to the eye than she seemed.


	3. Paradox

**The man smiled, a rumbling in his chest as he chuckled, his arm around her shoulder. They strolled past the carousel, the tall tale music had children roaring with excitement, people milled around the couple. Children would sprint around them like sugar-high demons, forcing their parents to follow in loving exasperation.**

**She brushed her hair from her face, the matching smile to his is beautiful, divine in his eyes. Her chest felt like bursting with the love, the adoration and the feeling of wholesome comfort with him by her side. She still had to give the joyous news to him, so much to say on the tip of her tongue.**

**They picked their picnic setting under a tree that provided enough shade from the warmth of the sun that beamed and heated the whole of the city. A shift in the air indicating a good breeze to help cool the park.**

**The man spread the blanket, she set the basket down. Before sitting down, his hands cups her face, she leans into his touch. His artistic hands are soft, smooth in his movement. Their smiles adorn both of their faces as they look to each other, into one another’s eyes.**

**And the booming noise she could never unhear, what will forever haunt her in her dreams, _shot_ him down. He shocks her with his abrupt, sudden jerking. She watches in creeping horror as he falls to the ground, away from her grasping hands. A gasp escapes her as a pain blooms at her hip, but she never heard that second shot.**

… … … … … …………….

She hissed with an intake of breath, sitting up to touch at her abdomen. “Well, _fuck_.”

Galatea pulled off her sticky sheets, near growling at the gruesome sight before flying off the bed towards the bathroom. Quickly, she turned the shower on, grabbed her necessities and gobbled down the pain medication for the upcoming cramps. But the damage is done.

“ _Damn_ …”

Before entering the shower, she returned to her bed and proceeded to remove her now blemished bed lining and under sheets. The woman groaned in her indignation, throwing the sheets to the floor. But she does sigh in the relief of her mattress being spared, ignoring the sharp pain that stabs right into her. This mattress had been the best she ever bought, it was probably the only thing that really mattered in her apartment.

But still, she would have to buy new linen. Gods, damn all of this. A shower is the first order of business, her inner thighs is close to the appearance of a massacre. Dried blood is harder to wash off, she’d know that from experience.

… … … … … …………….

She shoves her keys into her jacket’s pocket.

The usual every day habit she had, same as that she’d lock her door with the keys and not just lock it before stepping it out. It is the same as she would also take a moment to pause and study what she had with her and not just walk out the door before heading out to only realize that she forgotten her wallet or her phone.

But what is not a part of the routine that she has naturally developed in the time she’s lived in Hell’s Kitchen is hearing the screaming.

22B. She knew of the young couple that lived down the hall, from the one time she had met them. The two; a lovely, bright eyed woman and a tender, kind, joking man had moved in a couple of months ago. At first glance, anyone could see it— everyone could see that the two were still in the thrall of the first stage of the honeymoon phase of their marriage.

When Galatea had welcomed the two, on the coincidence of them passing by her in the hall, the girl had the brightest smile. It was the kind that blinds others on how _young_ and happy she is. A blessed young woman with that ‘glow’ that most women would have when in love. The man, he could not stop looking at his gorgeous wife.

It had Galatea congratulate them a second time.

Galatea, presently, frowned as her head still turned to look down the narrow hallway. The door that read ‘22B’, housed the crying scream of that pretty, bright, young woman. It tugged at her heart, a storm winding up in her chest just before the first lighting strike. Life had ways of turning to bitterness and rage.

What happened to that honeymoon love, huh?

Even so, it is not her problem.

There was never a complaint put in, no one reported the screaming, the bruised wrists and tearstained face. No one ever saw the girl outside the apartment the day she entered it.

Galatea could not go in as the homicide detective, could not go in with the authorities as her rank of lieutenant. She could do _nothing_ without the evidence or without that young woman calling for help. The trouble of involving the precinct— she’d gauge her eyes out at the thought of the messy trouble.

She turned to the elevator awaiting her at the end of the other side of the hallway. One more scream sent a whip of heat lashing at her heart, cleaving open a river of bleeding _instinct_. Gods damn it all. The elevator dinged as another scream had Galatea’s eye twitch.

Then there is silence. It is a thing of dread and trepidation creeped its cold fingers over Galatea’s heart of hearts. Her chest expands, inhaling a breath, only feeding off that feeling of cold rage that is building inside of her. Her fist tightens, her knuckles turning bone white.

What the hell…

It is her problem now.

Galatea Winters turned back on her heeled boots and swiftly paced towards the door of 22B. She had not noticed that the opening of the elevator had one Pete Castiglione arriving back from his own morning routine.

The woman clucks her tongue in distaste as she found the front door unlocked. She listens to the breaking of plates and something else made of glass shatters too. A man’s voice is shouting profanities, accusing and angry.

A glass is thrown, shattering on the corner wall just before Galatea can turn that said corner.

She barely flinches as the pieces catch in her hair, glittering in their shattered glory. When she finds that man, the husband who not once took his eyes off his wife in loving adoration, standing over the curled up form of a feminine figure— it has Galatea scowling.

A firestorm continues heating up her spine and curling its taunts to her. She counts, counts his waving limbs and the constant movement of his entire body. She counts the breaths, wild and frantic. Not drunk, not influenced by anything except rage.

She does not waste her breath on warning the husband off, he earned nothing less in the pain he has dished out. Instead, she quickly maneuvers for her heel to find home in the man’s socked foot. An elbow strikes into the guy’s gut, this has him choking on his pained, unexpected scream.

He has no time to react, just as much as the wife who stops her soft cries.

Galatea grabs his shoulder and _yanks_ him even further down, so his face meets her cocked knee. As the knee stuns him when it connects to his face, it has him going down— he freefalls to the floor. The husband does not come back up, only groans. That man begins to clutch at his face, his blood spills onto the floor from his undoubtedly broken nose.

He would even get a black eye from the force of her knee finding its way to his face.

The bottle green eyes, alive and spirited, are all that Galatea catches from the young woman whose hyperventilating form is still curled up on the floor. Those eyes held silver tears and bloodshot veins, she looked up as Galatea stood over the downed man. Her mouth is open in disbelief.

Galatea regrets all of this. There is that nauseous feeling in her gut is a terrible feeling as it hungrily eats away at her— for not having come sooner, for trying to restrain herself in not just beating the man into nothing but fine coffee grounds. She found herself near speechless in the post-wrath of having downed a man but as those bottle green eyes keep switching from Galatea to her husband, she finds herself speaking.

“Stand up, honey. Get to your bedroom and start packing all your essentials.”

Get this woman focused, give her something to distract her from the violence. To not further traumatize her for what is to come.

It’s the easiest way to help domestic victims, especially as they are conscious and still aware in this kind of setting. Those tearstained eyes blink owlishly, pianist fingers touching at her bruised face, knees up to her chest and elbows draped over them in a defensive stance.

Galatea needed to take her away, get her to a safe place— damn, she really got herself into a rut now. Something was going to find its way back to the precinct and bite her in the ass. But right now, Galatea could not find it in herself to care.

The woman, the sight of her willowy, petite frame chips into Galatea’s heart. This wife, who had such bright eyes and such a captivating smile, barely even just skin and bones. She is a bird with her wings having been broken. She had been broken to the point of no longer hoping to fly away.

This is the worst, it had her heart clenching— Galatea would return the favor, she thinks darkly. A blooming fire is still building in her rigidly straight spine. The chilling, malicious thoughts running a thousand seconds in each passing moment only growing darker in Galatea’s head.

Those green eyes flicker to her abuser and back to Galatea once more. It takes another second, but the young, waifish woman is standing. On almost automatic, jerky movement her graceful legs carry her away with speed, especially moving hastily as the man is still groaning in his pain. Galatea cracks a grin, she does not know if it is because the girl still had some fight in her or because of the man’s position and pain. Again, she can’t find it in herself to care.

“There ya’ go, pack only a week’s worth. Whatever you need. Shut that door, too.”

As the spirited, little bird does as she’s told, Galatea is grabbing the man. She ignores the ripping from his cheap, cotton shirt as her fingertips dig deep. She turns him onto his back, eliciting another yelp from his throat.

A tilt of her head, she is only letting the silence hold for a moment as she takes in his pathetic position. What a sorry state he is in. He is going to be more sorry soon enough after Galatea is done with him.

“I’m just going to assume that your father never taught you to never hit a lady, right? Or do you just get off on terrorizing others, huh?”

Why she bothers to ask is beyond her.

But sometimes, she still never can grasp the concept of why people give into the corruption and the violence and the greed. It pisses her off with the wastefulness of life. It saddens her on how humanity can fall so _easily_. She has been around long enough to watch it all— there is nothing more tragic than this very fall of humanity.

A creak from the wooden flooring alerts Galatea, she barely even glances towards the new person entering the room of apartment 22B. But it is all it takes for the abusive shit of a husband to trip Galatea right onto the floor by yanking on her ankle to pull him down to his level. She lands on a pile of broken pieces of smashed plates and hisses at the crunching noises underneath her.

The man is attempting to get up, pulling at her and cursing at her for interfering. He is yelling in retaliation for her supposedly unwarranted trespassing and damage she has done. He grabs at her, attempting to claw at her skin in quick swipes.

She pushes him away with a string of curses, familiar and of the ancient language of her heritage. With a well-placed blow to his gut, the man is grunting from the force. She punches him again in the face, another vicious crack from his nose sounds off.

Luckily, Galatea’s leather jacket took the brunt of it but still— falling unexpectedly takes anyone’s breath away. She has grown complacent, even with all of her training. Galatea would have been able to roll back onto her feet or not let herself be taken down in the first place.

How embarrassing.

She spots the shadow of a newcomer, a growling man, standing above both her and the wheezing man that he keeps away from her. _Pete_ is moving on the husband. And seeing Pete hit at the other man with a volley of punches to the face?

Well, she has never seen such a show of violence.

He is not stopping, her heart lurches at the second of the thought. Her head tilts, taking it all in, the blood, the raging, wild storm in his grunting and punching. Galatea scrambles back up, ignoring the biting of pieces into her palms. She begins to grapple with Pete, attempting to stop him.

“Pete, _Pete_ , stop!”

The man is heaving in his breathing, huffing and puffing, eyes wide and wild.

He appeared uncaged, unleashed, unhinged. His face has some of the now unconscious husband’s blood speckled over his face while his fist is wet with the red substance. He shifts now, looking and assessing Galatea’s unharmed form. He is grabbing at her wrists, her hands, then cupping at her face, pulling her closer to him and startling her slightly.

His voice is demanding, roaring and all-consuming like wildfire.

No, he _is_ wildfire. This man who just became her neighbor the day before, he is brilliant and scorching as his hands keep looking for injuries. His eyes practically devour her in the almost black voids. She thinks he is an avenging god of fire, of war— but gods do not, should not, show their hearts to mere mortals.

But then again, he is not god, and she is not as mortal as he is.

“You alright? Are you alright?!”

She nods, heart stuck in her throat as she is speechless. Her falling had Pete react in such a way, attack like a feral thing to protect her? By the gods, a small seed is planted into her heart of hearts, thriving off her rapidly beating pulse. She swallows, seemingly forgetting to breathe right again.

Before she can unstick her throat, to speak to this living whirlwind of a man, Pete is letting go of her with a mutter and shifting his eyes to lock back onto the husband. She watches as he stands with a grunt, and then, Pete is _dragging_ the unconscious man. Galatea scrambles again, getting up to her feet with adrenaline still rushing through her limbs. She follows after him to the apartment door.

“Where are takin’ ‘im?”

Pete and the man are down the hall’s length in seconds, closing in on the elevator. He does not look back to her, his grip unforgiving and uncaring for the man in his grasp.

“Downstairs, takin’ his worthless ass out!”

Pete hits the elevator door button. The cheery ding is a startling sound amongst everything that just happened. After the doors open, he still has a hold of the beaten man. A trail of his blood had left skid marks on the floor as it goes towards the elevator.

He finally looks to her, from the elevator to 22B’s door. Those dark brown eyes of Pete’s hold her until the doors close on them.

Galatea steadies her breathing. She had not realize her hand reached for what used to hang around her neck, but she does find a chain. She lightly strokes at the metal plates where she finds a comfort in the nip of cold to her heated fingers. The blood pulsing through her body, this mortal shell, is livid, near _boiling_.

There is a warm presence at the base of her throat, she rubs some more at the metal plates on the chain around her neck.

The thought of the wife, the wounded, waifish little slip of a woman has Galatea stumble back inside the whole of the apartment. And the red haired woman is still behind the safety of the closed door. Good, she knew better than to open it, even if things went silent on the other side

“Hey, honey, you finished packing? You can come on out. _He_ ’ _s_ gone.”

The door does not open until Galatea steps closer to it. When it yawns open, an inquisitive eye blinks rapidly in between the open space of the door and the frame. When the eye blinks down to Galatea, the door further opens and the lithe lady barrels straight into Galatea’s compact frame. She was even thinner than Galatea had first thought, at the only glance upon her from earlier.

“Thank you,” her voice, a timid tone— a breeze against a summer storm— a soft, fragile sob, “ _thank_ you.”

Galatea does not respond, instead she shoulders off her leather jacket. The girl still clings to her, thin arms clinging to Galatea’s waist. The detective shakes off any remaining bits of shards from the piece of clothing. And the little bird flinches before she realizes that Galatea is wrapping her into the warm leather.

When the bird begins to cling onto the jacket instead of Galatea, her pianist fingers fluttering over the lapels and gripping upon the sides, the detective ghosts into the room. She grabs onto the zipped close, packed roller suitcase and returns to the young woman’s side. Galatea’s hand is lightly touching the woman’s biceps as she is gentle in guiding her along.

“Your name, tell me, hun.”

The bird looks up, eyes and nose rimmed with red. Despite her being taller than Galatea by a few good inches, she is small and lonesome in her current state. Her fingertips dig into the warmth of the leather jacket as she seeks solace within it.

“Marion…”

She struggles slightly, not wanting to speak of her last name, she does not want to tell or speak of her husband at any capacity and Galatea only nods. She could always get the information later but Marion’s safety is her first priority above all else.

Her hand is carefully placed onto Marion’s lower back as the two venture to the apartment’s kitchen.

Galatea’s tone is soft spoken, to placate the fizzing nerves of the younger woman, “Well, Marion, this is one hell of a start for meeting you again.”

“Nice to meet you again, too, Miss Winters,” Marion smiles timidly, sniffling away the rest of her tears as she speaks.

Galatea does not correct her, even when the mention of her surname has her nose twitching. She vaguely remembers telling her name to Marion back in the past. Just as she remembers the woman laughing and lacing her slender digits through her husband’s before biding her farewell.

That had been the last time Galatea had seen her outside of the apartment.

The rollers on the suitcase is the only noise as it is pulled along with the two women. Marion pulls out some styrofoam blocks, grabs something she must have hidden behind all the supplies in the sink cabinet long before the abuse reached its’ peak. A phone, a jewelry box full of money and a necklace. Galatea’s heart pangs, the isolation first and then the abuse— only the swirling flames on brimstone and frosty ice of hell would be enough to punish Marion’s husband.

“Come on, my apartment first and I’ve got a friend who can look after you for a while,” Galatea informs, continuing in gentle, low tones.

Marion nods, clutching onto both the leather jacket and her reclaimed necklace. Galatea carefully stashes the phone and jewelry box away into the suitcase before steadily leading the younger woman to the apartment’s front door. Galatea murmurs reassurances as she opens the door.

Marion gasps, _staring_ at Pete’s tall stature.

He had returned from getting rid of the trash and now he is also staring back at Marion with his darkened brown eyes. They remind Galatea of whiskey. And there is still a tint of that savage wildness in him, with his tensed shoulders and now clean, clenching and then unclenching fists. His face is rough hewn, unforgiving and unyielding.

And then his eyes, hooded and fathomless, shift over to Galatea.

“My apartment,” Galatea chucks her keys underhanded; her voice is firm in her command.

It is to give him a task, make that male ego feel of use, and not direct any of his attention towards Marion. That would be for the best, for the both of them, to avoid frightening Marion and him getting upset or angrier at the sight of Marion’s situation.

Marion’s state of mind is not sound. It is a shaken thing of fear and post-adrenaline from being physically hurt— she did not need to feel like another male was attempting to devour her with his wildfire of a heart. Pete would not hurt Marion, but the mind can make up all kinds of things under stress.

At first, Pete just stares, he had caught the keys one handed and allowed it to sit in his palm. But then his attention shifts from Galatea to the keys before turning around, showing his broad back to Galatea and Marion. Pete huffs lowly but obliges.

Pete does not walk like most people.

He does not swagger or stroll, the man does not show confidence or a humbleness in his gait. He _prowls_ , he stalks forward but not in a menacing stance. He slumps his shoulders once more, to make himself appear small as possible and non-threatening towards the little bird as he stalks down the hall. His feet carry him to the apartment door across his own.

Galatea hugs Marion to her body’s flank. She feels the slender woman shudder and the two follows the hulking man. The only sound is Pete unlocking the door and the rolling of Marion’s suitcase. Sometimes, Marion sniffles, but it sounds like she is trying to limit herself to keep the silence.

The three enter Galatea’s apartment.

Pete is first as he checks out the apartment for signs of something, overprotective as his nature deems it seemed. Marion and Galatea approach the living room couch, Marion carefully sits upon it at Galatea’s leading with her hands. Pete picks up on Marion’s withdrawn expression and ghosts into the kitchen at Galatea’s nod towards it.

He finds the small first aid kit on the bottom cabinet as she instructed it would be.

It was stored next to the fridge and the box is something industrial and not just a regular one for simple wounds that can be mended with bandaids or some Neosporin. It is huge even in his large hands, heavy with supplies within, and the only reason Frank knows it is the first aid kit is because of the bright white cross amongst the red of the exterior of the kit.

Hunter meows.

The soft yowl startles Marion’s shaken state and she laughs as she realizes what Hunter is. Hunter is purring, agilely brushing against Marions’ calf. Shadow only watches from her windowsill, her ghostly blue orbs aimed at Pete.

“This is Hunter, this one is a  glutton for food and attention.” Galatea scoops up the young Aegean feline and then places the furball of a glutton into Marion’s arms. She informs the other woman, “Scratch behind the ears, he likes those.”

Marion does as she is told and Hunter purrs, melodious with a deep depth. The little bird relaxes but her tearful gaze becomes distant and reserved. It is the best outcome, it has to be. Galatea sighs lowly as she finishes assessing Marion for any open wounds.

Pete nods wordlessly as Galatea approaches him, her own gait resembles something of a slinking wildcat on the prowl. The man is still hanging back in the kitchen with the kit on the counter. She confirms no wounds, sighing again. Hollow is how she felt, a yawning chasm of nothing in the depth of her core— she is too old for these kinds of excursions nowadays.

Pete surprised Galatea with the light press of his fingers to the back of her head. She tenses at first before realizing his intention and she relaxes, bending her neck to allow him more access. He is checking for any bumps, his calloused fingertips carefully prodding, weaving past her thick locks of hair.

He pulls away to reveal some blood.

Damn, Galatea had not felt that, it must have come from the fall onto the shards of plates or glass. The frown on the towering man’s face wipes what collected peace he had left, and he digs through the kit, another mutter falls from his lips. The determination on mending her wounds is definite, absolute in his eyes.

Galatea turns around, silently, before lifting most of her hair away for him to look closer to her head wound. She shifts her attention momentarily to Marion. Hunter is delighted in the absentminded petting as he is cradled in the woman’s arms.

Galatea barely flinches as Pete prodded at the larger portion of her split skin. She would never know his eyes are looking at the bare skin of her neck that is bare and vulnerable to him. His other hand is just barely brushing along her shoulder.

“Gonna need a stitch, maybe two…”

A rumbling, a stroke of thunder across a cloudy sky, has what is in Galatea’s heart let loose slightly. Something sighs, maybe she is sighing, at the familiar sound of his voice. It is as if a part of her is saying _hello_ , _I know you_.

“It could be worst, you any good at stitching?”

He pauses at his assessment, his hands halts and brushes against her neck before falling to his own sides. “It’ll be good enough.”

Because Pete was not one to brag, huh? A small curiosity wants to ask on how, but for now, she will wait.

Galatea’s eyes find Marion again. The freed bird is focused on Hunter now as he is rubbing his chubby furred head to Marion’s face and neck, his purring continuing in it’s own rumbling and meowing greedily.

“Do it, saves me from going to the hospital,” she shrugs indifferently as she voices her decision.

She moves to locate the needle and the stitching threads. He watches as she finds them on muscle memory alone, like she has worked on in many times over and gotten used to it. She offers gloves to him as she sterilizes the needle. He quirks a half smile in dark amusement at her murmurs for attempting at infection control.

She threads the needle herself, as his fingers are too large for such a delicate, tedious task and turns around once more for him to begin his work. The sting is there but watching Marion wistfully looking over takes whatever could hurt and makes it into a tithe of a promise and a soft spot in herself for the little bird.

After Pete finishes, he nods his chin to Marion whose watchful, unblinking eyes are now aimed straight at Galatea and him. Those bottle greens remind Galatea of an old friend who knew who she once was, is— maybe Marion could accept her as her past friend had.

But maybe, it would also be best for Marion to run as far away from Galatea as she could.

He questions, low and rumbling still like thunder in the clouds, “What are you gonn’ do about her?”

Galatea cleans up what little blood is left over with a swipe of alcohol on a piece of gauze, hissing with clenched teeth. Those blue eyes of her Brooklyn boy appear in her mind, it has her spine straighten a little more as she thinks— she made a promise to the both of them.

She keeps her promises.

“I’ll handle it. I got a friend with a place uptown, nice and quiet— got an extra room specifically for little waywards. Not that she’ll ever admit it. She is a little mean but she won’t turn away our little bird.”

He stares long and hard, but nods, ceding to her suggestion.

Galatea thinks that he knows, knows her promises, knows who she is and once was but still could become all over again. She needs him to, those whiskey eyes and calloused hands could survive this world, could survive _her_. Only the gods knew what those like her could truly reap through their deeds.

Marion strokes Hunter’s head, the only sound in the room now is the purring.


	4. Familiar

**The man with the near golden hair and caramel for eyes, that held youth and hope, is her opposite. She with her raven black hair and gray brown eyes that held an archive of infinite, tragic wisdom within. His smile is of temperance and patience, hers brash and secretive. His heart held the warmth of love for a world’s worth, her heart held jagged pieces, enough left for him in a carefully glued back together shape.**

**They are not smiling anymore, there is no laughter, of his golden heart or her silver mirth.**

**The man suffered from too many _bullets_ hitting his soft, unguarded flesh. She could only cling onto him as he bled. There is no way to save a man pumped full of so many goddamn bullets.**

**Her voice scratchy, grim— she ignored the searing pain that encircled her throat. Her dainty hands covered in red. She can’t stop it all, her fingers are slick with the life, the blood, all of that red. She can’t stop it all by herself.**

**She screamed over and over. And no one ever came.**

… … … … … …………….

Galatea opened her eyes, ignored the closed, tight feeling in her throat and forced an inhale of air into her lungs. The burning is not relieved from her. She hummed, gravelly and dry, as she sat up.

Her mountain of various pillows is at her back. She rubbed at the phantom pain blossoming around her throat. Her chilly fingertips ghosted at her prominent apple, moved to the back of her neck and rubbed at her vertebrae that ache with a soreness that runs down the whole of her spine.

The thoughts are still there, lingering, just ghosts that will only serve to stick to her like the rest. She thinks back to Murdock’s handkerchief, that silk red, and the blood, the life of the man Pete beat unconscious. Galatea hated red.

She averts her still discarded thoughts from the reminiscence of a bloodied silver haired man for her upturned umber eyes to glance forwards to the alarm clock. No surprise, 4 A.M.

Hunter is not on her bed, yowling for her attention. Shadow, however, is always watching— sitting in the windowsill of the bedroom’s single window. It gave a clear view for the street below, also a not so practical emergency escape exit; as the building’s side staircase had been mounted on another side with a small walkway.

She frowned but found herself not caring to think too much— not everyone in Hell’s Kitchen needed to be restless. She thinks of Marion, a promised call to check in with Galatea.

Stretching, she begins by curling in on herself with her outstretched arms forward— a couple of upper vertebrae pop. Afterwards, she arches her back and straightened her arms upwards, her legs unfurled and in front of her. Her lower back pops, her arms creaked, and legs groaned at the exertion of her muscles and joints. Man, she is really getting old.

With a breath inhaled and exhaled, she began rolling her shoulders as she bent her neck with leaning her head from one side to the other, earning some loud cracks that rebound in her ears. Relief from the tension of her body is small, but relief, nonetheless.

Time to start another day, away from her work and those unpredictable shifts. She doesn’t kick back in for work until next week, she scowled at the thought. Working is what she does to keep herself busy, these days but with her last ‘vacation’, she needed the time off.

The silvern hair, the life spilling from that boy flashes before her eyes, she looks away quickly from it. That boy is still alive. His twin as well. They were alive, and they were far from her— they belonged elsewhere. Those two would never be near her again, if she could help it.

With little else to think of, hopping off her bed is her first action. She stripped herself of her night clothes and shuffled in her drawers for some clean, day appropriate clothes. Shadow’s purring is the only audible noise to be heard within the room. Good omens, hopefully better than near killing an abusive husband and saving a waifish victim who’d be scarred for life.

Galatea pulled a long sleeved sweater of purely soft perfection and some loose pants. The last thing needed to be done is going to the bathroom to attend to the abomination that is her hair.

The mirror, both ally and nemesis, revealed the state of her hair and she is not surprised by the curls of her hands or uneven waves at the ends. When she showered last night, her hair thick with saturation was smooth and easy to brush. Now, she frowned at the strands that bounded back to its original curliness after she would pull at it.

The woman brushes through her short locks with her long fingers, delicately scratching at her scalp but still careful, mindful of her new stitches. That stops her. Her thoughts taking a detour at the memory of the calloused hands that had stitched her up carefully, precisely. The man living across the hallway. He had raged so brightly, so fiercely.

She should have never let herself fallen like that…

She absentmindedly stands in front of her sink and her diabolical nemesis of the mirror’s reflection. A soft hushing of her thoughts in the back of her mind, at a resurfacing past memory of redhead’s careful manipulation to her once longer hair in the past. The spider’s silk spinning fingers another ghost that plays at Galatea’s hair and taking residence in her head. Too many memories, she had too many, and she still cherished them all.

Galatea reached down for her actual brush and cautiously, as if dealing with a wild animal, the woman raises the brush to her hair. Here goes nothing.

She attacks, after a few moments of staring at the curls.

She repeatedly brushes at the curls with the bristles of her brush, attempted to smooth out the handful of thick strands. It is a repetition of the harsh strokes until the curls capitulated and somewhat even themselves out. There are now wavy pieces of her hair in hand’s grip, smooth and pliant.

Well, at least that moderately worked out compared to everything else with her mess of a life. The handful of strands waterfall, barely whispering to her shoulder as she then reached for another handful. She stopped, when something catches her attention, umber orbs widening slightly.

Scratch that previous thought— she watched with mute resignation as her brushed hair part curls up in slow motion. _Gods_ damn it all. A heated rise of anger beat in her heart, and then it lowered, she sighed as she let go of it. She did not know why she even bothered, the short woman in the reflection is casually chucking her brush down on her sink counter. She route stepped right out of her bathroom.

When her phone buzzes, she promptly snatches it up and travels to her kitchen, where Hunter is already stationed there and yowling for his food.

“ _Marion_ , how are you?”

Hunter is satisfied as he is served his food. Galatea relaxes as she hears the soft mumbles of a waking Marion, the younger woman claiming something about sleeping well. And it probably helped that her newly acquainted friend offered her with a huge supply of alcohol.

“Just don’t let Jessica drink you under the table, she’s got a mean streak… But I am glad she is taking care of you.”

Marion speaks breathily, worriedly, as she mentions the thought of her husband. Galatea grits her teeth at the mere mention of him, the fall still ingrained in her mind’s eye. But that also insights the memory of calloused hands cupping her face and wild whiskey eyes peering into the depths of her soul. She quickly waves the memories away as she placates Marion for a few more minutes.

“I believe he learned his lesson. But if he comes anywhere near you, you run the other way… if you need anything, keep in touch, Marion.”

After the call ends, Galatea leans her head against the back cushions of her couch with a heavy sigh. Blue eyes, blonde hair and sharpshooter’s eyes but a sharper, friendly tongue tries to reassure her. His hand signs and the grin on his aged face only brings about more jokes. The other birdman would probably join in on it too with his own cheeky grin.

 _Softie_ , kindhearted, that was what the blonde archer called her whenever it was just the two of them together. But he had always called her Lionheart in front of the rest of the team. Not just because of how fiercely she stood up for others, but because she always took on a familial attribute to those she looked after. Lions were all about their pack, their family. He claimed that she was no different.

She never let the others in on how he fondly called her as such. But they all knew that she took his kids like they were her own. Those kids called her _aunt_ on multiple occasions— enough for the rest of them to pick on how the kids saw her and how she cared for them despite not really having blood relation to them.

Hunter finishes eating and Galatea’s boredom is already at its peak.

It is not even far into the morning to consider _early_ lunch. Galatea slapped her forehead as she leans backwards to hang precariously from the back of her couch with her upper body— the call with Marion had been short, she could of dragged conversation a little more longer. She eyed her living room from her upside down view.

There is nothing to clean or tidy up, she never let her living space become cluttered. Her coffee table is free of her mugs or her work files. The bookshelf to her small television’s right side is dusted and organized to her own style of categorizing them. The only thing left…

Her eyes shifted to the kitchen.

She did not care to own enough dishes or silverware for her numerous cabinets or drawers for spices and other condiments. And she only did weekly sweeping of the kitchen as it is the only part of her apartment without carpet flooring. No luck to reclean the kitchen then. The living room and her bedroom was vacuumed for clumps of short fur and any gathered dust that could possibly exist in the corners of the entire living space.

She sighed again, closing her eyes and felt the rush of her blood going to her reddening head, face and neck. What else is there to do?

Galatea gets her answer at the small prayer for mercy.

A bark sounded through the walls. Opening her eyes, the woman pulled herself up and she proceeds to sliding downwards to correctly sit in her seat before standing from her couch. Jack is here, he only barks in the presence of his human. Pete is here then.

She ignores the lingering memory of those calloused hands at the base of her neck. With a new mission on hand, she feels that it is a good time as ever to acquaint one’s self to the owner of the friendly pit. Pete is a man of few words, but he seemed receptive towards interacting with her. Also, there is the fact he had not called the police on _her_ for beating up Marion’s worthless husband. But then again, he’d been the one to beat him unconscious _. Still_ , that would have been awkward, considering her _career_.

The both of them are creatures of solitary preferences, who were similar to lone wolves. But even they craved contact and interaction with someone, one to connect with and understand. Or… at least she is. So, she hoped Pete would be, as well.

She took to opening her apartment door without the usual attire of her leather jacket and came to the view of Pete Castiglione’s broad back. Damn, did he gain more muscle mass or had his back always been so broad?

Jack had heard her approaching feet, barking happily at her appearance from her door, the pit’s large head tilted towards her and panting with excitement.

A smile formed after her tongue had darted out to lick at her bottom lip,” Pete.”

Her way of greeting is casual, earning more barking,” Jack, hello to you too.”

The dog’s tall human of a man twisted his upper body at the waist and turned his shoulders, hand in one pocket as the other unlocked his door. He opened it with a simple turn of his wrist. Dark, hooded eyes locked onto her compact stature.

“Ma’am.”

She closed her eyes, his voice still had that ephemeral effect on her— husky, gruff, the kind that would send most people into a fright or packing. And yet, she delighted in it. Behind that looming, muscled form, rough-hewn face and the dulcet tones of his voice, is a man. Another living person, there is a life, a story of him in those whiskey eyes.

As she opened her eyes, she also leaned against her door frame, bracing herself for a possible rejection. “Are you doing anything in particular or scheduled? I’d like a companion… or two, for lunch today.”

Pete fully turned his body to face her, to look at her, surprise in his shadowed eyes.

Did… did he not get asked this a lot?

Galatea bit her lip, maybe he is not much for interaction, as she assumed of him. A little sliver of gnawing guilt gnashed its teeth right into her.

“Uh…”

She blinked at his small reaction.

… … … … … …………….

He is taken to the lack of appearance of leather jacket at first. But the second his eyes find her steady gray brown eyes and the angle of her neck from tilting her head as she studied him, all he could think of is the stitches he had sown at the back of her head. The softness of her thick, wavy hair and the trusting tilt of her head. And he forces himself to keep staring at the face of all his preoccupied thoughts.

“Ma’am.”

He still retained the memory of having watched with rapture at the seraphic beam of her full lips, which had been aimed at Marion. It had been when the waifish, little lady handed the jacket back to its original owner. He couldn’t let go of that image, of Galatea shouldering the jacket on near instantly upon its return. Reminisced of her smile downgrading to a small, sorrowful thing as if she remembered something from the distant past.

Something that she wanted to forget but did not have the heart to let go of. He had heard Marion’s curiosity in her question towards the jacket— the woman with dusky skin only waved it away.

Over the couple of days’ worth of time he crossed paths with her, he observed everything concerning her. Tiny, irrelevant things, pertaining to him and yet monumental to this woman. And he had seen the substantial, important things that she could care less of but nitpicked at a _portion_ of the big picture that no one else would consider.

This woman, the one he not stop looking at, like a fool. But the thought of Maria would always have him backtrack. And yet, now, he still gawking at her. The question she asked him of, had him short-circuit like a dumbass. Like he had forgotten all about his nightly activities and future plans that involved a lot of violence and blood, all in favor of her question.

“Uh…”

“It, it’s fine, Didna’ mean to put you on the spot there, Pete…”

He blinks back at her, maybe dumbfounded, maybe relieved. The whiplash is real. He must look like he is at a loss what few words he’d chosen to ever speak. He is hearing the screams of Maria, for their children. Hears the screams of the crowds rushing away from the carousel. Hears the bullet he took in the head, but never heard the ones that took his little girl, his boy, his wife.

“ ‘m just a lil’ bored, here. As you already know, I am still on ‘vacation’…”

Right, she had, yesterday. The memory of his little _girl_ fades as he begins listening to _Galatea_.

She scratched at the back of her neck, pushing her thick hair to one shoulder with little though, pointedly made to stare at Jack with a lonesome smile on her face. It tugged at his heart, especially as the memory of his hands caressing the back of her neck after he inspected and stitched her up.

 _You’re a good man_ , Maria whispers in his ear, echoing to the back of his mind.

“I didn’t say no.”

Galatea’s eyes dilate, her vision sharpens to focus on him as she lifts her eyesight back up to him. She blinked as she steadily beheld the man before her.

“What… what? Really?”

“M’yeah. Not doing anything today. Just walked the dog.”

He flicked his thumb over his bottom lip and allotted both of his hands deep into his hoodie’s pockets. He could not look too closely at the blooming grin on the women’s face. He’d feel like he would cave in on any of her wishes, if she asked them from him.

A satisfied hum from her had his heart rate raise slightly, he stared down at Jack.

 _You’re a good man_ …

A good man would have protected them. Not just watch them die because it had been too late.

“A’right… bring Jack, if you’d like, Pete. Maybe at eleven, we head out, yeah?”

He looked up, to spot her questioning eyes. That twinkle and the small curl of her mouth’s corner, it silences his little girl’s laughter, the excitement in his boy’s yelling.

He nodded,” Yeah, that’ll do.”

He fell back into the silence that is shared between the two of them, his guilt silences Maria’s lingering ghost of a memory.

It is not awkward, as he thought it would become with Galatea. Everything with her is a smooth, natural feeling— something he had not known to feel for some time since _then_. And that’s considering after he’d beaten that husband for tripping Galatea onto the floor. A man he nearly beat to death had he not listened to her.

“Eleven, then,” she winked at Jack,” see you, boys.”

… … … … … …………….

She came with the leather jacket back on her shoulders, no surprise.

The walk to the diner is pleasant, Jack happy with his second walk for the day, especially with the additional company of Galatea. Pete commented on it, said that the dog probably liked her more than him, the ungrateful mutt.

The bell rung when Galatea opened the double doors with enough force in her push. The woman cleaning a nearby table of a booth peered up and spotted the trio, especially Jack.

“Betty! Dogs are allowed here, right?”

Pete watched with amusement as Galatea clasped her hands up to her chin, batting her eyelashes prettily in mocking fashion and attempted some puppy eyes of her own. Jack had followed in suit.

The plump woman splayed her hand at the hip, playfully glaring Jack and than back to the woman in leather.

“Hmm… alright, goddess, if that dog behaves, he will be allowed.”

Pete raised an eyebrow at the nickname, lips curving into a smirk, but then Galatea elbowed him towards a booth.

“Hush you… thank you, thank you, Betty. Jack is a _good_ boy, I promise. Can’t say much about the other one.”

She squints at Pete who attempted to protest at her words, the man is certainly smart enough to keep his mouth shut and Jack sits loyally at his side after he sits down. Galatea follows suit and sits on the other side.

The silence is a comfortable thing, born of him quietly ordered his own share of food as Betty already had Galatea’s cappuccino ready and black coffee ready for Pete and Galatea watching out the window with her chin carefully held up on a propped up elbow.

“Marines.”

… … … … … …………….

Those eyes look up to him from the mug that the waitress, _Betty_ , had served to Galatea. A slight tilt of her head as she processes his single word for a sentence. She is a lethal force, not to underestimated, it still remained the number one thing that came to his mind every damn time he looked to her.

“Scout sniper in the corps. You?”

She smiled, a slow curving of her mouth, it is a sinful thing that entices him with that dangerous feeling of _other_ that hovers of her shoulders, lingers in the depths of her gray brown eyes. Whatever she hides behind them, it was just _waiting_ , and he still could not think or want to guess about what it is.

Her calloused dove hands circle around the mug,” Hellenic Armed Forces, I served in their Army branch.”

Jesus Horatio C _hrist_ , no wonder he could not pick up on it.

“We, Greeks, had some tough wars back then. We got good with strategies.”

He finds himself chuckling, nonetheless,” Yeah?”

Her nod, the inviting curve of her neck another thing to entice him,” Was a medic— got real great scores on my qualifications. Some guy asked if I wanted a new job as an “Elite”. They needed a new sniper.”

Her low timbre regaled him with awe.

“You liked your new squad?”

She quirked a grin, those upturned eyes become distant. Galatea’s head still tilted to the side, her curled waves of pitch black covered one eye and half of those cheekbones and jawline. She would be the most distracting, most lethal piece on anyone’s board— she knew it, he knew it, everyone would learn it, if they thought otherwise.

“Being part of the ‘Hel’s Guard’ was different than anything else. We got trained on _everything_.”

“Thought you were the shit, right?”

She crows out, a throaty sound that would send lesser man packing. It would send even him running for the hills but he is keeping himself planted now.

“Yeah, yeah— I was young, _unattached_ … back then, I was still a rebellious hellion— getting left on the steps of a temple in the middle of nowhere? Well, that kind of leaves a bad impression on anyone.”

 _Shit_ , that was one way to put it.

He would have said something but then she smiles, waving her hand— she let go of that transgression, did not let it weigh her down.

Galatea is graceful in his eyes. Not like Marion’s careful, fluttering hands and head turning with her elegant neck to look for exits. No, Galatea is sharp, steady umber eyes that halts everything and everyone in their tracks and stunning, paralyzing quirks of her mouth that has everyone rethink of how to approach her. Predator, through and through, how he hadn’t guessed her as anything other than soldier, of _other_ , at first glance had him dumbstruck.

‘Thank you for your service’ is something civilians would say, but he was no civilian. And so, he mutters,” Semper Fi.”

Her brow arches,” Eleútheron tò Eúpsychon,”

He blinks, she again finds new ways to thoroughly fuck with him.

“Freedom stems from Valor,” her lips greet the rim of her mug as she hums softly.

The two stare at one another, Jack happily huffing between them and Galatea feeds him a piece of some bacon that Betty had put as ‘on the house’ for the pit. Pete drinks his black coffee, amused as Galatea winced in disgust.

“Straight black coffee, Pete? Just gross…”

And yet, he drank it like it his lifeline.

“Drink your cappuccino shit. I’ve chosen my poison, ma’am.”

The silence remains, Betty occasionally shouting behind the register.

That is before Galatea smiles, albeit sadly. “I did not do it for the _thanks_. I had… a lot of anger inside. I sometimes wonder, if, if that anger is still around, and it will come back to bite me in the ass…”

She sipped her mocha,” And sometimes, I wonder if the anger is all I will have left…”

Yeah, he wondered about that for himself sometimes. And he knew his answer as he recalls beating Marion’s husband unconscious for the sake of protecting Galatea, but because he _wanted_ to do it.

And he also knew that he needed to stop looking, watching after her like he is now. She should not be involved with his type of life. And yet, he could not shake the feeling, whenever she is close to him. A kinship.

He realized something, as she fed the pitbull and hummed some tune he could not recognize, realized that she looked at him like she knew him. Like she knew that he knew her as well. He had always caught her looking at him as if expecting something she knew would already happen.

Pete could not tell what it is.

And he supposed that, that is the mystery of Galatea Winters.


	5. Soldier

**She watched those gold eyes— of youth, of hope— die out. A flame in the dark that flickered, begin to wink out and the darkness devoured the rest of what once remained. She watched it bleed right out of him. He is nothing more than a broken body, a shell. There is nothing but for decay to set in now.**

**He is gone.**

**She ignores the pain of her scorched, voiceless throat. Nothing is left in her. What she once had, having once formed an image just for him, had been _gutted_ out of her the moment she’d fallen to her knees and _pressed_ down on his wounds. In some attempt to keep him alive, she pressed down, down, down but he continued to bleed, it pooled underneath her fingers and pooled over soon enough for her to know that he would not survive.**

**Her fingers are still wet, but the blood is beginning to dry with the biting chill of the wind.**

**He is gone. And so is her heart.**

**He is gone. She does not know what to do. She mouths that much to the body, she only croaks a mourning noise. It spoke of her grief and loss clearly enough. It is the only noise that could give voice to the gnawing feeling in her stomach, the thing that ripped her heart apart into nothing, the dark void behind her eyes howls at what remains of herself.**

**The woman leans over at the waist, gently laying her forehead to his. A silent wish for him to return, a miracle she knew would not happen. The dead do not come back. She learned this lesson over the countless years. Only now, she remembers the lesson.**

**He is gone. _Gone_.**

**She closes her eyes, whispers her goodbye. And she hears the _click_.**

… … … … … …………….

This is definitely a first.

Galatea blinks blearily, rubbing at her eyes as she looks down to what thumped against her front door and had repeatedly beat at said door for a full minute before she had forced herself to wake up to investigate. A man in inconspicuous, dark clothes for blending in, duffel bag by his side and smeared blood on her door coming from him. That is what has been banging at her door at such an hour. His body is half leaning on the frame and the walls of the hallway, his head turned up to look at her in surprise.

Her heart nearly stops on the spot, as agonized whiskey eyes locks with her umber ones,“ Pete?”

The man groans in response, head bleeding a dark red down to his collar, split lip, and a cracked nose. He has a shiny, black eye just beginning to form. Goddamn, what a mess he made of himself. Or whoever it is that he decided to allow himself to be used as a punching bag.

It is his shoulder that Galatea eyes longer, it must be dislocated from the way he is nursing it. He is holding onto it with some care with his bleeding hands, split knuckles and all. But it is not just his blood, it had to be someone else’s that is also covering his hands with so much of the red. Her breath catches, because it _is_ someone else’s. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

“Get up. I don’t need you bleeding on my door,” she hisses out before grabbing at his duffel bag to drag it in her door space.

When he doesn’t comply right away, she signs heavily,” _Gods_ , damnit, Pete!”

Time to get to work.

Galatea bends with her knees, helping him to his feet. This elicits a pained grunt and an _apology_ for bleeding on her door. Of course, he would care more about the bloody door than for his wounds and pain. She rolls her eyes, now is not the time be polite and well-mannered. Was this a Marine thing or just something that Pete naturally had?

The two soldiered on, slamming her door close and moves into her apartment space. Pete sat gratefully on her dinner table. It is bare, nothing could be dirtied except for the wood itself. She grabs a couple of towels from her kitchen before returning to his side. She presses at his brow to wipe the bloody away, she keeps pressing despite his frowning face and clenched hands.

“ _Christ_ , Pete. Did you beat up an army of wife abusers?”

She helps him shed his jacket coat off, hanging it on a chair carelessly, she barely glances to catch the bullet hole sheared right through the material. She shares a look with the man, who is blinking, trying to shake the pain out of his head. His whiskey eyes pierce through her until it crosses at his grunt of bodily pain, his other hand still clutching at his dislocated shoulder. No answer? Alright, then.

“Don’t go following _my_ example. Now, your shirt. Get it off.”

Before she can hustle for her stocked first aid, medical box that is in her bathroom, his throaty rasp almost trips her up,” Not m’ name. _Pete_. ‘t’s _not_ my name.”

She let herself go on automatic, thoughts swirling as she had caught that garble of his words, his truth slipping out. _Gods_ , whoever is watching over her anymore must be laughing at her. The detective returns to find him shirtless and he finds her gaze hesitantly, as if him being in her mere presence is a damning thing by itself. She says nothing as she approaches him, slams down the box onto the table next to him, she begins to prod at his body for anything else possibly being broken.

Luckily, he’s got no fractures or broken bones from what she could tell. But a gunshot wound to his side has her glare at him, he’s bleeding like a stuck pig— it is a slow trickle. But that could mean internal bleeding, if it struck one of his organs. Galatea is not one to pray, she let that go all to her blind lawyer of a friend, him being a god-fearing Catholic and all. And she would not let herself pray, because it would mean she could not patch up this man before her.

Fuck that. She can and she will.

With an unforgiving frown pinched on her face, she lays her hands on his chest and shoulder, to check his dislocated limb. The man eyes her wearily, not knowing her thoughts as he is certainly no mind reader. She clutches at his elbow, ignoring his grunt and wince. A pop comes from her twisting his arm back and thrust upwards. He curses with a growl, but he finds a short-lived relief at the sensation of his arm’s full function returning. Albeit, he would be sore later on.

“Could ha’ warned me…”

She ignores him,” I’ll stitch you up after I pull out that bullet.”

The man blinks, not quite realizing that she is thinking at a far faster rate than he is. Again, the whiplash is real. Must be because of that bullet in his side. He grunts out, acknowledging her racing mind that is working on all the details of keeping him in the world of the living. He watches as the woman carefully pulls on some gloves from the inside of her surplus supply in that huge ass medical box. The snap has him blinking slightly warily.

She locates a syringe and a small bottle. He sees it, shakes his head immediately.

“Just do it.”

Refusing numbing? The balls on him, Galatea ponders on if he’s mentally sane. She does not complain. She can do this, had done it multiple times on the field. The memory of a man beneath him and her wandering hands, the booming noise of a bomb and showering of sand is all the chaos not acknowledged by her as she is digging something out the faceless man. A bullet in her bloodied hands is all she focuses on. More shouting, those hands rush to bandage the man up.

Blinking herself out of the memory, she does as she is needed, expertly plucks out the bullet when she finds it in a second. He, not-Pete, growls again, flexing his hands, clenching and gritting his teeth. She rotates the remains, looking for any edges and the blood reminds her of the shocking image in her past.

“Clean break, uh, yeah?”

She starts, at the deep rasp of his voice, and right out of another, separate reminiscing of a storm in a desert, of a pain in her shoulder and the lack of someone by her side.

A click sounds when she drops the bullet on the table, her cynical, dry tongue responds,” Yeah, your lucky day.”

He breathes heavily, his eyes taking in the slow trail of blood down his side now, after she grabs a bottle of antiseptic and some gauze with a roll of medical tape. Before the man registers her opening the bottle, she is already splashing him with it. He thrashes in his spot, she pats at the wound, only further inviting pain from him.

“Christ, that _burns_ , goddamnit!”

Galatea chuckles lowly but does not respond with anything, snapping at him would do neither of them any good. But she lets some snippet of her anger to show as she dowses another piece of gauze with the antiseptic.

He snarls right in her face, but it is not of anger, just a pained reaction to her taking a swipe at his side to provoke him in her own display of anger.

They both stare at one another, as if trying to dig up whatever is between them to slip past one of the other’s mouths. But they remain in their silence, his furrowed brow and her bared cuspid the only signs of their stubbornness.

When nothing comes, she moves to thread the needle from her supply and he only leans back slightly to allow her the room to move about with him. He clearly could not stitch himself in the confusion born of his blood loss. And she would not let him because she was the one who had trained to be an actual medic back in her term of serving, so she would always be more appropriate for stitching him up.

She begins stitching him back to one piece, “So… not-Pete, tell me a story…”

Because that is what’s going on, what matters at the moment. Why he is here, bleeding on her table. Why she is stitching him up. But Galatea, of all people, would not force him to tell the truth— needing an answer all the time was never her forte. She could shoot first, ask questions later as she once did in some long ago past. He must have picked on it because he looks at her, long and hard before he looks down to her gloved meticulous hands.

They do not shake, they are careful, and he does not even feel the needle digging into him as she starts a new stitch. She is shockingly good at this, despite her service only being of some five years. Not that he would know that she had always been more of _just_ a soldier.

“Frank,” he rasps out.

He notices her slight pause, her upturned eyes had dark bags that could not be born of just from being woken up fitful sleep to begin with. Her clean, sun-kissed skin has him reeling as he remembers her strangeness, that _other_ , he grips onto the knowledge of her being a soldier born on a completely different continent. She is a soldier of both foreign and yet familiar training.

“M’ name’s Frank…”

A good start, she supposes. The scissors are beside the other bundled up gauzes, she snips off the end of the knot’s tied length, wipes away any remaining blood before she carefully places the bandage gauze and medical tape to his side.

“You come home… right?”

Her umber eyes finds his whiskey ones as he begins.

 _Frank_ starts, sitting back up properly when she pats his shoulder, “You, you find your family there, waiting when you had been gone for almost an entire year…”

Then she snaps off the gloves, trashing them next to him and into the small trash bag she scrounged up from the kitchen before. He watches her as she pulls up a tube and some more gauze after putting on a new pair of gloves. Those eyes are darkening as it becomes longer, _harder_ , to look away from each other.

Galatea dabs at his split lip with the gauze, rubs some of the ointment on his cheekbone with her gloved thumb. Strangely intimate, not that either say anything about it. Frank looks down to her, the man is still taller than this Grecian woman even when he is sitting on a table, his eyes begin flicking away before finding her again. He is lost in a wave of something. Something she can’t name just yet, but it is a familiar something.

She sees it in the mirror, sometimes, often now as of late…

“Marines, Force Recon. I was a scout sniper. Did some shit, the bad, the ugly bits of war… killed a lot of people. And my wife, my _wife_ , she tells me she’s just glad I am back home. Got the time to rest now.”

He licks his mouth, bites his bottom lip after, before he looks to Galatea again. One hand grips the table making it groan underneath his strength and the pressure of his weight., the other one grips her wrist after she taps at his cracked nose. She needed to see if it needs to be put back. And it needed to or his nose would be ever more fucked up. He definitely made himself appear as a bruiser type, took it to a next level, knowingly or not.

“Tired, I was tired. You’ve ever been tired?”

She nods. He stares a little longer, marginally shifting side to side in his trance before he lets go of her wrist. She wrenches his nose back into proper place with a firm grip. He groans, she hands him a towel for the gushing blood now erupting from his nose.

It is silent for a full moment before he starts talking again.

“My kids, they were outgrowin’ the park, the carousel. But _Maria_ , she, she wanted ta go. Ta celebrate me being back home with them.”

Galatea’s heart is racing, her hands go cold as she wipes at his knuckles too, being quiet as to listen to his story flowing out more. Her racing thoughts would never match to his spilling words.

“I didn’t, didn’t see it coming. And then I hear a shot go off— clips me right in the head. Woke up in the hospital…”

He peers down to her now, his brow furrowing down as he is reliving that moment and the scowl tells her that he is uncertain. But he is directly looking _into_ her and it dawns in her that he is talking of taking a bullet _in_ the head. Sweet, holy _fuck_.

He watches her grab out some wipes, antibacterial or some shit, “They ever tell you tha’ you don’t dream in your coma?”

She begins cleaning her pliers, her needle, her hands,” Never been in one, so I’ll take your word for it.”

Galatea winces at the cracks of her words, those words the first spoken to him after he had told his story. She sounded so distant.

Because it is, it is a lie, but she did not take a bullet to the head like him, to end up in a _coma_. She put herself in a coma for trying to save some foreign, unknown body in an equally foreign country that was being destroyed by the mistakes created by a stubborn idiot of a genius. But a friend, one she still calls as such, despite their glaringly obvious differences. He was uncontrollable, like a thunderstorm before it found ground level. She had been frigid ice born of an unleashed blizzard, something uncontainable, of ice and frost that had been untouched for centuries.

When _Frank_ does not answer of say something, Galatea turns around right into a bare chest covered in battle sweat and some smeared blood still on his stomach. As she faces him, looking up, up, up, she finds him looming over her. The man’s whiskey eyes are darkened almost black. And he keeps staring down to her, as though he is trying to decipher some sort of riddle in her umber eyes, those brown flecks still so enticing to him.

She stops thinking long enough before she restarts with a jolt.

He keeps staring, blood leaving his nose and trailing down to his chin. It has been long enough for him to do whatever should have been needed to keep her silent, to keep his secrets as they should be. But he didn’t.

“You’re not really surprised… you gonna ask?”

He is close to her, their knees bumping into one another and his breath warms the cold of her cheek. His shoulders are hunched, and it should feel like he is trying to trap her, enclose her in some nonexistent embrace. Her back is still to the open of her living room space, however.

She shakes her head, surprising him.

“I killed a lot of people tonight… murderers, rapists.”

He grasps at straws, as though trying to force her into some state of horror at his confession. And it sounded like one, a confession— confessing to _her_. As if he is trying to find some sort of reason, for either absolution or for condemnation, from _her_. Frank looked as though he did not know what he wanted from Galatea. She could not tell if this is a good thing or not, but she knew what she should say next.

Galatea sighs, reaching to touch at his brow with another towel, to wipe at the small nick on the arch of his right brow again,” You think you’re the first vigilante I’ve met in my life? _Frank_ , you’re looking at one, _ex_ -vigilante, at least.”

He jolts, as if the pain at his eyebrow is what brings out his surprise. He must have not really expected that word coming from Galatea’s mouth so casually. And at the confession of her oh so mysterious and unknown past. She certainly did not sound repentant at all, she knew what she was— is— and she would keep it. She knew _him_.

Her quirked eyebrow, the small rise of the corner of her mouth has him jolting again,” Or wait, do you prefer anti-hero?”

This would be her response. Besides, it looked as though that Frank needed some more time to find himself. Galatea could do that much for him. They stare at one another for a little while longer, those unspoken words between the both of them still remains locked behind whatever it is that is shielding the both of them from a known yet hidden truth.

He snorts abruptly, offers his hand to her in between the small space of their close bodies,” Frank Castle.”

She tilts her head, feels the callouses of his own hands and she finds a small comfort in the tightening of his grip,” Galatea Winters.”


	6. Killer

**Survive.**

**That click. A weapon. One shot is all that is needed at this close of a range. Or so they think.**

**But whoever they are, they underestimated her from the very beginning.**

**They do not know her. They do not know of the fathomless chains that confine her, hold her down. For they are ever-binding, built from the core of a dying star in the depths of an unknown void. These chains had been built for her kind. They do not know that of all the souls in this world or the next, she is a survivor. And they do not know what she has done or will do to continue to survive.**

**The chains had been created for her as limitation. The restraints are to curb her endless ire towards the world. Those same chains bend to her will, her fury is what snaps them at those links that had weakened, weakened by time. Time does such effects over all things.**

**A wolf in sheep’s clothing, the intruder no one discovers amongst the rest. Ever so hungry, looking for the next hunt. Her throat continues to burn with a power that had once been known to the world but forgotten, lingering on her tongue the fading heart of a once been god.**

**She opens her eyes. The man is long gone from this world, so she will seek him in the next. But she remains here, for now.**

**They will know her. They will know they have given her cause to cast her bonds. They have forfeit away their own lives— she will claim them, willing or not.**

**Survive.**

… … … … … …………….

Marion called. A rush of words spoken, too fast, but it is enough for Galatea. It is not the mention of her husband having been spotted by her while she had been on a grocery trip to the store. It is the panic, the slurring and the hitched breaths. She’s trying to catch her breath but only brings in a vicious cycle to begin hyperventilating. She had _run_.

Galatea did not hesitate to walk out from her apartment in her pajamas, shouldering her jacket and slipping on a pair of battered boots that would not give her blisters from the requirement of socks as comfort. She stays on the phone, forgets the scarf on the hanger in her flurry of moving limbs and hushed words to calm the young woman down.

And she runs as well.

In the form of a tempest, the Grecian woman should have been a shocking thing to behold, as she nearly had the double doors of the diner unhinged. Not that she reacted to it, as she is focused on something else. A quick swivel of her neck from left to right, taking in every customer and employee before she settles her eyes onto Marion. The little bird chose a booth corner that gave her distance from the double doors and safety of being further inside the diner.

She hustled to the ruffled redhead in that corner booth, the both of them still holding their phones to their ears. Galatea is noting the windswept tresses, the trembling fingers that hold onto the phone while the other hand is drilling a piano pattern onto the booth table. There is also Betty, who is serving the poor, shaken bird with something warm poured into a mug.

After Galatea nears closer, she pockets the phone after ending the call. Her breath comes in light puffs, the chill of the night still clinging to her. Marion smiles hesitantly before placing her own back onto the booth table. Her hands are still fidgeting in her post-adrenaline.

Galatea steps closer, standing on the side where Marion choose to bequeath herself to.

“Marion— what happened?”

Galatea’s hands delicately brushed at the woman’s face with the precision of a retired medic-sniper. She had done it countless times, assessment through physical touch to determine if things were broken or untouched. To see if blood had been drawn, to see the severity of the injuries, it was her job after each mission once she relieved herself from her own perch from afar.

She remembers the time a bullet had ripped through one of her old squad mates from Hel’s Guard and she pieced him back together with only a scolding tongue and quick stitch work from her flying hands. He claimed no one could work as fast as she ever did.

There is another memory of being the person that her other squad mate had collapsed onto because he had tried to hide it, trying to be some _hero_. He ended up with a punctured lung due to one of his ribs having been broken after tackling someone else down from a grenade’s blast. And she had to do impromptu work of drawing out the blood through a small reed after stabbing him in the chest with the pointed end of the reed. Those days of war, of action and brave soldiers were never her darkest.

“I, I dunno, you know. I was just walking and I thought tha’ I was being watched. That, that tingly feeling you get at the back of your neck, or somethin’…”

This vulnerable lady with her artist’s hands flustered at Galatea’s focused ministrations. Marion looks up to Galatea, who she knows is seeking out any injuries invisible to the naked eye. Her hands are still shaking, the circulation had been scared right out of her hands— she has stiff fingers that ache as they are cold. To see Marion’s fear and to know it still affects her, these kinds of moments were the darkest for Galatea.

“I’m not hurt,” Marion put enough of her will and confidence to still Galatea’s own searching hands.

At least, for whatever that would scar Marion for life, it brought them together. Galatea could teach her to no longer be afraid, to be hurt by another. Galatea could do that, teach her to defend and to find her own strength. Galatea would leave Marion stronger, no matter what the detective felt in the end. That is her promise.

“What happened, then?”

Galatea’s worry is not in her voice. It is her bloodshot eyes, red from not enough sleep because she had awoken to Marion’s call. It is her disheveled tresses, distressed curls at the crown and pieces of hair sticking out from her half assed attempt at a mini bun. And it is her obvious panting, she had run the entire way to the diner in a few minutes flat. A whole two miles from her apartment to the diner.

Marion jolts with surprise, feeling something akin to surprise at realizing what Galatea gave up to _come_ to her. She fidgets, her thumbs press together, and mouth turns into a thin line as she begins to bring up the topic that she knows would bring a dark look in her savior’s eyes.

“I think, I think that _he_ ’ _s_ back. Come back for me. So, I ran as fast to the diner. Called you. Didn’a know what else to do…”

Marion clung to Galatea’s chilled hands, seeing them clench as the dark look that had been predicted came to life. The detective sniffed slightly, hot cocoa is in the mug. Her mouth curled, amused at the motherly tack displayed by Betty. She placed a small chocolate stick and whipped cream with more chocolate shavings to add onto. Galatea released a soft sigh— of relief, of sanity remaining intact.

“You’re safe now, Marion, scootch over and drink your cocoa.”

Galatea huddled into the seat of the booth with Marion clinging to both the mug and the leather jacket and pajama clad woman. Betty served a quickly made mocha cappuccino and Galatea did some clinging of her own after she murmured a request for the older woman on some breakfast choices.

Her attention slowly made way to Frank, a plate of eggs, bacon and a single piece of toast are on his own booth table. The hulking man had been there to eat before Marion had hid herself away in the diner, he must have picked up on the distress radiating from the little bird that had been married to the husband he had beaten unconscious. Only after he had watched Galatea be taken to the ground and onto her back. But he still remembered.

He decided to stay because he knew that Galatea instructed Marion to always give her a call, no matter the time of day— before she sent Marion off to that private investigator that could look after the waifish wife. Frank remembered the appreciative look when Galatea spoke of the PI that liked to drink a little too much, a hardened soul that could never turn away someone like Marion.

His whiskey eyes seemed darker as per usual and Galatea would not be surprised if her own mirrored his. He drinks a mug full of coffee, one that Betty refills with a new steaming pot, Galatea could smell the dark roast from even across the diner. And she feels like he knows that she can, because he smiles at her disgust displayed through a scrunched nose after he takes a gulp. He’s got that asbestos mouth, doesn’t matter if the coffee is too hot for others, it is right for him and he does not drink anything else. No sugars, no creams for him. He offends Galatea with that gulp all on its own and revels in it before he watches as she pointedly gulps her choice of caffeine down.

They sit and wait. The birdsong muffled through the windows are melodious in their chirping, the sun’s rays of light caresses their creeping fingers across the expanse of the diner. Hell’s Kitchen goes on for another day. And so would Marion, Galatea and Frank.

Galatea absentmindedly rubbed Marion’s shoulder, the detective’s eyes burns from the direct connection to the blooming light. Marion yawns, stifles it behind her hand, the sun’s light glitters in her blazing red hair. Frank disappeared, left his booth shortly after Galatea’s entrance and finishing his last mug of coffee to prowl around the streets as a look out. He is never too far from Galatea; never had been, it seems. Not that he ever lets her know.

“Come on, you can nap with Hunter at my place. I’ve got some calls to make. Set up a restraining order and all.”

Marion’s bottle green eyes brighten up significantly. She wonders aloud and questions Galatea all about Shadow and Hunter, their dislikes and their favorite types of food— simple questions that Galatea enjoys answering. It gives her a reason to stop remembering things and making new memories with Marion.

And as Marion and Galatea venture out of the diner together, there is a whisper at the back of Galatea’s mind.

There is a story, the story of the dragon and the snake…

… … … … … …………….

As the two leave the elevator, they bump into Frank. Galatea and “Pete” stare at each other. Not a battle of will, but something of understanding. Frank wanted to remain as Pete in Marion’s eyes, as long as he could help it. Galatea could help with that too. Jack is excited with the prospect of another new human companion in the form of Marion.

The redhead gasps excitedly, moves to pet and coo at Jack. Galatea arches up an eyebrow and Frank only rolls his eyes but has a chuckle rumbling out with a half smile on his bruised face. Galatea liked that about him, that smile is the only one that brings out a certain light in those whiskey eyes.

“Morning’, ma’am.”

That’s a first, him starting the conversation. It seems like it’s back to “ma’am”, then.

“Morning, Pete,” Galatea smiles at the smile still on his beat up mug,” you’ve already met Marion before.”

Marion looks up with her bright, evergreen eyes, a breathless wide smile on her glowing face. The woman notes that bruising on Frank’s face, her smile falls into a frown before quickly recovering. She assumes that her ex-husband had somehow gotten the best of the hulking man. It is best to leave her to that assumption, both Galatea and Frank decided with a collective nod to one another.

“Good morning, sir!”

Jack barks out his own greeting enthusiastically.

… … … … … …………….

Hailing that cab had been an expensive godsend— she entered the precinct with a sneeze but ignored the stares and curious glances of passing officers. Galatea pushed a jittery arrestee who attempted at inching off his chair when no one had kept a good watch over him.

Her scathing look to _stay down_ in his goddamn seat left him pale— especially for a man of Spanish origin. And she thinks a small, deathly thing of possibly scaring him with something more. She doesn’t let the thought stay, however, she’s got better things to do.

“Hey, Gale, how was your breakfast? You ate before coming here, right?”

A technician greeted the woman in the leather jacket cordially with his casual, laid back personality. It is commonly unusual for them to leave their chosen place, but he is never one to keep to expectations of others. And he always found his way to gravitate to the one person he always answered to.

He had his bulbous headphones hanging around his neck haphazardly and his glasses are slightly crooked on his straight nose because he had stepped on the optic accessory more than once in the time he has owned them. This was a common appearance of Leo Archer, grown prodigal genius in all things electronic. And he is possibly the only person who could weasel his way into Galatea’s life without reprimand from her. For whatever reason that is.

She continued on her path without stopping. Thus, prompting the lanky man to follow her.

“Delicious. I am just here to pick up some files and go back to my cats, Leo. You got my text for that restraining order?”

Leo smiles, a wink is all that dictates his answer.

“So, this Marion and her husband, how do you know them exactly?”

She does not answer.

The Grecian transformed, Detective Winters is on a mission. She opened her closed office’s door and strolled not the unlit space. Leo followed anyways, he always did with her and had long gotten used to it. His hands are shoved in his loose jean pockets, humming with a distant tune, probably from a digital game he played during the weekend off.

“You know, people say ‘off work’ for good reason. People usually jump with joy to get off working and _with_ pay. Come on, Gale, you know you need the time off to rest yourself. Recharge and _relax_.”

He knew exactly the reason why she had gotten off from her demanding but mundanework, he was there too. He had always been there with Galatea— not that anyone knew, not even the redheaded shadow with her silk spinning fingers or her blue-eyed Brooklyn boy. Leo had been her own inside man for everything, since the day she met him. He never unstuck himself from her, no matter how many times she had demanded him too. It is because he knew too much of her, knew that she could survive with no one else by her side. But only if that is her only option. Leo knew that and stayed, regardless of the risk to his own life.

Leo skirted around her, stopping her from reaching for her sought after files with a gentle grip on her wrist. But those eyes of his, they flashed, and it is a question he does not dare to speak of in this space. Too many eyes, too many ears— this was no place to stay idly, no place to speak freely. He knew the gravity, the severity of all things when it comes to her— secrecy is always something she kept a firm control on.

Her umber orbs contested against his distinct rust colored ones in a stare down,” Leo…”

She answers, a soft dip of her chin is all there is. Those distinct eyes of his narrows slightly, surprise is all there is.

There is no need to will him to step down, this is game they both had thought and planned through,” I want those files, Archer.”

He smiles playfully, playing along as if it is truly a game and simply shook his head, his playful smile and his distant humming vanishing,” No, can do, Gale. Boss’ orders.”

She grit her teeth at the mention of the ‘boss’. That man having been a pain in her ass for the better part of the last two years, gloating of how a man is ‘much better suited’ than a woman for a higher position, such as the captain of the precinct.

He never let the chance to rub it to her face go past him, his stupid, leering smirk pissed her off. Even though she had not intentionally tried for captain, everyone had voted for her to run for the position instead of slimy, repulsive, sexist Henry Dadwal. But due to the same, good _ol_ ’ _fashioned_ thinking of privileged white men who attended the board meeting, she was left to be under Dadwal’s demeaning and overall _shit_ skilled tyranny with the rest of the 15th.

Even if she could not openly disobey orders as a member of the police force, she sure as hell would state her goddamn opinions about the revolting _malaka_ and where to shove his own opinions. Sometimes, the thought of returning to the wilds would be an easy thing.

She bares her teeth right at Leo. He had known exactly what she was _and_ is since the moment he had been born into this world. She had never _just_ been something akin to him or the next person. And Henry Dadwal had another thing coming to him, if he thought he could control someone like Galatea.

No one leashes something that had been fashioned from primeval elements such as Galatea.

Leo releases his hold from her wrist, offering a placating hand as his surrender. The smile that curves upwards on his face sharpens the glint in his rust colored orbs. People have never realized that he could be just as dangerous. Because he manipulates from the background— out of sight, out of mind. Just the way she had taught him, to keep him as safe as she possibly could.

At one last answering glance, the technician leaves her office first with cheerful parting words. The detective reforms, her weariness returns to seeping deep into her. Her very bones ached. She has played this game for far too long, it makes her wonder if her soul still remained _intact_ somewhere hidden even deeper within herself. With one last cursory glance born of taught paranoia, she leaves her office with the door closed.

She pushed the same arrestee down on her way out, her last scathing look is child’s play to her new one. The man looked close to vomiting after she left him handcuffed to his seat. Any officer that passed by him only shook their heads in mock pity.

Galatea is struck with the thought, she had gone soft, indeed.

As she walked out of the precinct, with the files tucked into an inside pocket of her jacket and just _boiling_ in her wrath. Something inside her is just itching to rip right through and roar out to the world of everything she has bottled within herself. Her elevated pulse is one thing, but the heat lodged in her throat is another.

Galatea, in the past, would have ripped Dadwal’s throat out with her bare hands for his condescending smile alone. She wondered about what her past self would say to her. But she already knew. Both of her selves were too tired to care. She has always been too tired.

As she approaches the curb, signaling for another cab, her phone rings. Marion, once more calling to check in, she had woken up from her nap. If the files were not inanimate, they’d burn right into her with the truth they hold.

She is greeted with a soft feline sound and something sizzling. The cab is quick to approach the lone woman of the restless crowd. It is lunchtime now.

Galatea sighs out heavily,” Almost there, Marion.”

There is a being of great power, the storyteller. Their power is words, stories. They have traveled everywhere. They collected the stories told to them by the people that they had come meet from all parts of the world. An exchange of stories is the way to enthrall the storyteller to tell of the stories they have collected. The storyteller, they knew the story of the dragon and the snake intimately, because the storyteller knows every story so very well. For the storyteller is said to even transcend the universe, to collect stories from the gods as well.

The dragon and the snake were siblings.

… … … … … …………….

Being pulled onto the ground is one way to be taken down. But being hit in the back of the head is another. Galatea has lost all patience that she could possibly have withheld within herself.

The _thu-twang_ is something that echoes like a vicious thing born of cowardice and disbelief. And it is the soft whine that brings Galatea’ spinning mind to a stop. The trail of blood that had been wiped by a hurried hand just underneath Marion’s nose has Galatea’s throat _burn_ in her fury. Someone had hurt Marion in Galatea’s own apartment.

Somehow, the husband is back. And the bastard is standing in her own apartment like he owned the damn place. Hell, to the goddamn, _no_. Galatea found a small spot of _hatred_ to bloom inside herself. And he would be the recipient of that hatred, one way or another. Fuck, the authorities, fuck the police. She is no longer following the proprietorial rules placed by the delicate, _fragile_ ways of the people.

She should have never stayed as a homicide detective, the position does nothing in a place like Hell’s Kitchen. A vigilante does more work than the police, for fuck’s sake. She should have never remained here as _just_ a detective, considering what she used to do in the past.

The foreign, falling country and the blood spilt from that foreign, silver haired boy fills her mind. _Sokovia_ , she came at the call of her Brooklyn boy to aid in that disaster created by her other _friend_. That equally as foreign boy, the one they called _Quicksilver_ , she helped him as she had once helped a woman who had quicksilver eyes. That same woman had _revived_ both the boy and Galatea during the whole disaster.

Despite what it cost, in the midst of Galatea’s own problems, she still came out on top. And she returned to Hell’s Kitchen, to have the wrongs be made right. Being caught up with Marion had never been the plan.

“You see that, Marion? Nothing doesn’t keep you safe, not from _me_!”

But being caught up with Marion would become a part of the plan.

The _twang_ silenced by weight being fully placed on the door stand next to the coat hanger is a metal object, a kitchen _pan_. Galatea had been hit with a _pan_ , of all objects.

Grown soft, indeed.

Marion cries out to rebuff her approaching husband. The man does not go farther past Galatea’s fallen form, as she grabs him by the ankle and _pulls_.

Marion sobs in relief. She must have thought Galatea had been down for the count, considering the pool of blood that formed underneath Galatea’s head. No, a metal pan would never be Galatea’s undoing. She had been born of more than what could ever be comprehended by the mere mortal mind.

Galatea parrots, “Nothing will keep you safe…”

The man is _horrified_ , as he is being kept down by her. No matter how much he struggles or claws at her hand, she is _not_ letting go. His heart is near bursting from his chest, his bones are reforming under the pressure of her grip. The first pop is his ankle giving out. His pain is a symphony of yelling, tears spilling from his eyes and his relentless clawing at Galatea’s hand.

“From _me_.”

Marion’s eyes widens in surprise. Galatea closes her eyes, ignoring the sickening trail of blood down her neck. She always did like that deep rasp. Her mind is a vortex that is not helping in the reeling that makes her more dizzier after another passing second.

But the husband is begging, spit flying from his lips and the creeping disbelief grows in his eyes as his head turns to face the man who is looming over both Galatea and the husband.

Frank is holding the pan in one hand. His whiskey eyes holds Galatea still as she does with the husband’s ankle. He takes in the blood, the faraway look in those upturned, umber eyes. There is a _crack_ that elicits another whining scream from the husband. The Grecian woman is _breaking_ the bones in the husband’s ankle.

Frank decides then. Galatea catches the look— as Frank snaps the husband’s neck with his _bare_ hands after dropping the pan to the ground.

And everything goes silent afterwards.

Galatea looks up to him, the vengeful god of war and of wildfire that he is.

A _thump_ catches both Galatea’s and Frank’s attention. They turn their own heads to find that Marion had fainted.

… … … … … …………….

When the cab comes, Frank watches as the PI that called _Jessica_ carries the unconscious Marion into the cab. He watches as the cab leaves into the night.

Galatea sighs out heavily. Frank had forgotten that she had been there, standing in the door space of the apartment complex entrance. Apparently, the PI would have thrown some sort of fit at the sight of her, so she opted to remain out of sight as the PI arrived by cab. He frowns, approaching her as he recalls cleaning her up, stitching up the back of her head, _again_. And when she looks up back to him, those grays dominating all the brown, he can’t stop himself from almost kneeling before her. He slips one arm behind her knees and the other around her waist, lifting her up in the air as he stands back up.

Galatea does not complain, much to Frank’s surprise. No, instead, she lays her head on his shoulder. The woman of compact proportions and dove hands closes her eyes after he begins the ascent up to their floor in the elevator.

Frank ignores the echoes of laughter. _You’re a good man_ , _Frank_ …

When he reaches the apartment, seeing the door to Galatea’s still open, he ignores the puddle of blood and that the body that had once been laying adjacent to said puddle is _gone_. He ignores the watchful, pale blue eyes of the cat that never stops watching him. _Shadow_ is a fitting name, the revelation kind of brought out the feeling of trepidation. Frank realizes that the cats remained in the same spots they had been when he had walked in to find Marion and Galatea with the husband.

And that they had watched him, as he had noticed them briefly before turning his attention back the husband being held down by Galatea.

He wonders if they are _her_ watchers, as well. This is why he never quite never liked cats. They creeped the shit out of him. It is their independence, far too similar to the woman he holds in his arms, that matches her. No wonder she kept them around. They could survive without her.

Frank remembers the husband’s pain as he recalls that Galatea had broken the bones of the husband’s ankle.

Just like she could survive without anyone else.

Frank carries her to the bedroom. She is awake after the door’s hinge squeals in protest of being open. An alarm for an intruder. Frank had done the same to his own.

She had so many pillows. But only had a simple blanket and a cover set. He still slept in the easy chair by his too soft bed.

“Thanks, Frank.”

Her gray eyes look to the pillows and lingers. She is trying to avoid him.

“You’re welcome, ma’am.”

She pierces right through him, he watches in fascination at the quirking of her mouth’s corner. As if she is ready to reprimand him, to tell him that she is no _ma_ ’ _am_ , like she had mentioned the first time they had met in the hallway.

But instead, she crows out a low laugh as her body slips from his arms and moves to sit on her bed. The gray continues to dominate the brown as she tilts her head towards him. There are those unspoken words again. They are ready to be known now.

“Night, Frank.”

He blinks in surprise, watches as she begins to bury herself underneath her blankets and begins to rearrange the pillows like she has always done before she is ready to slip back into the realm of dreams.

“G’night, Galatea.”

He remains planted by her bed, as if he was still holding her, looking down to her bed and all those pillows. He realizes that the pillows are to give her the feeling of her back not being out on the open, known to those who could slip a sly blade and sink their betrayal between her ribs.

“No one’s said my name in a long time…”

The image of a field, some goats and huts are whispers that cling to her. There are children that would speak in a foreign language to her ears, covered in their people’s markings and they had been in awe of her appearance. For she had her own markings, her unique shape and being. And she has not spoken in a long time, not before she had found her way to the country that had hid itself for so long from the rest of the people to guard their secrets and power.

Galatea blinks away the memories, finds herself being stared at. Not the same reverence as the children, but not the same as a memory of fear and blood. He is not afraid of her.

He raised an eyebrow as if questioning her. She fluffed the pillow for her neck and closed her eyes once more.

Frank decides that sticking around would be best. And so, he leaves the bedroom door open and drags out the supplies to clean the puddle of blood.

… … … … … …………….

The dragon is the ruler of the skies while the snake is the ruler of the earth. It is said that the dragon searches for new skies to rule, to protect. And sometimes, the dragon flies away too far, away from the snake. For the dragon’s wings are magnificent, these wings carry the dragon to those new lands of marvelous things and these wings would carry the dragon back.

Always, always, the dragon returns to the snake. To tell the tales of these new lands they have discovered. The snake always enjoys these tales, the snake always, always warns the dragon to never fly too far away. For they are siblings, and for a sibling to become lost to the other is a tragic thing.

And sometimes, it is said, that the dragon must be called for by the snake. For the dragon’s magnificent wings carry them too far away from the snake.

Always, always, does the dragon return to their sibling, to tell of a new tale. But the dragon always takes flight to new lands, for the dragon is never to remain in one place as the snake does.

It is said, that the dragon never returns when the snake calls for their sibling.

It is said, that the dragon had become lost in the skies they had once ruled.

And the snake continues to call out for their lost sibling.


	7. Friend

**To her right— lanky, not a speck of lean muscle. He is born of weak, soft flesh to rend through with her teeth. His bones can be broken, made into dust with her hands. His soul could be released into the ether of the world, lost to nothing but time and to the darkness with but a whisper from her tongue. Her power would leave him into nothing, not even memory.**

**She breathed, the world tasted like dust, blood and the smoke and bullets that are still flying from others. The acrid taste disgusts her as the waste of life before her. She is waiting for the smallest of openings.**

**The man, this speck of life, _murderer_ , he speaks in a rush of words that she does not comprehend. Her thoughts are a maelstrom of another language, one beyond the stars, one of ancient, forgotten beings of power. She is lost, as the one underneath her, but she still remains in a world far too foreign to her mind, she is not gone just yet.**

**Years of compassion, years of comprehension, those are gone though.**

**The life within her, bred between those years is _bleeding_ from herself. She feels the loss sharply. Her silver mirth, his golden heart, the combination of those two made into another two have left her as well. Just as well as the blood from him with his wounds, the body that held his golden heart, his golden soul. Their mixed lineages, their love, what she had housed in herself, what she had wanted to announce to him, is gone now.**

**_There_.**

**She struck, lashed out, an asp ready to incapacitate, to ruin, to kill— she gripped upon the man’s ankle. This thrice killer, _murderer_ , will know her loss. She yanked him down, down, _down_. He is now nothing more than a victim now, he will know her fury, her wrath. Nor heaven or hell will greet him, he will find himself in the nothingness of the void after she is done with him.**

**After he falls, she lunges to wrap her bloodied digits around his throat, his belly at her mercy now. The fright, the fear, the terror, in his eyes feed the shade of a past self. One that had been born of an ethereal soul, with noble blood bred from stardust and laced with the darkness of the void. That past self is gone too, has been for far too long.**

**_More_ , _more_ , _more_ — it sighs into her ear.**

**Know her loss, her wrath, the wrongs he had committed— what he has done, she would return tenfold.**

**A sinful thing that she had not cared to listen to before, for a long, long time she had restrained herself and fit herself into the rules, the limits of the world. These things born of fragile, weak boundaries that she should have never followed in the first place. She had not been _created_ to follow those rules, she had not been titled _arcane_ and _warrior_ to follow others. She had higher purposes, ones that she had lost just as well as her very first form.**

**But this time, as she takes in the horror that has taken residence on the face of this speck of human life, she obliges. Her hands close tightly around his neck, nothing else matters to her than this.**

**A muffled crack filled her ears, the weak parts of him give under her strength.**

**And she continues to bleed as the blood coated on her hands and her fingers dry completely. The earth carries on around her, in blood and bullets, as the sky begins to cry the sorrows of the world. And in some other realm, in some other reality, her long lost self and her own people, her own kind, mourns her new loss.**

… … … … … …………….

There are the rare mornings where Galatea is gasping awake. These mornings are her nightmares born of her resurfacing memories, waking her from her deep slumber, she is clawing for breath and is falling off the soft mattress that she has been able to sleep on comfortably enough to rest her mortal body and quivering soul.

But this time, as she falls onto the carpeted floor of the bedroom— she remembers. Just barely a miniscule flash, that this is in her room— not a battlefield of blood, bullets and an unnatural dust storm born of a zealously guarded power. And she continues to fall off the bed, the pillows follow after, piling onto the floor around her. Galatea is grasping at her throat in vain desperation for sweet air, her body twists harshly as it becomes tangled even more in her blanket.

A boy’s face, young and sweet and _innocent_ , flashes in her mind. He is smiling at her, at the terrible joke she quipped out in an attempt to humor him. That same boy’s face is bloodied in another flash. He had died because she had been careless enough to think that leaving him with his people would protect him. All she had done, in abandoning him and his people, led to their deaths. She had to live with that, these cursed memories, this cursed body and this cursed life of hers.

Her vision tunnels, registering the ceiling above her, head pounding that leaves her gasping for both air and relief. But she does not receive those, she never deserves such things. Her insides groan, her bones and joints tremble in their core. Claws, vicious and sharp and familiar, are itching to tear out of her flesh. She does not hear the pounding of feet that crosses her apartment space, she does not hear the door of her bedroom opening with a screeching wail. Her alarm fails her this time as she struggles with her imagination, her panic— _gods_ , she still can’t breathe.

But she does feel the rough, calloused hands that carefully pick her up, pull her backwards into a solid wall of muscle and warmth. She whimpers, feeling pathetically small as one hand cradled her head and an arm is wrapped around her waist. There are legs that are longer than hers on each side of her. Those long legs are in jeans which the rough material gives a harsh friction to her own lower extremities.

“Easy, _easy_.”

Frank’s voice has her blinking rapidly and focusing, on his dulcet tones. When she turns slightly, she notes the worry, the _concern_ , on his rough hewn face that she spots in a glance. She does not deserve that…

 “Breathe.”

Oh, _gods_ , a body of a young soldier is a ghostly image to greet her now.

But she still breathes in, too slowly, to Frank’s liking. He can tell that Galatea became tense in a second. But she feels somewhat grounded, he knows that she is responding to him too. She sees it all, as he nods eagerly to her.

He does not know that the soldier leaning on the wall opposite of her own downed form, is looking to her in accusing hatred, the guilt is shoved down her throat. The soldier is another dark thing from her cursed memories. The soldier is just one of the many, many dead from her past. He is a part of _one_ of the many lives she has lived before.

“Keep breathing, Galatea.”

A soft gasp escapes her. A reaction to the sound of her name on his tongue— she breathes again, a gulp of the sweet, sweet air. A relief that she should not have but it is still given, by _him_. The soldier disappears from her sight. There is no splatter of blood that burns her skin as it had done the first time that soldier had died in her arms. She stops grappling at her throat, no longer struggles against the man behind her.

The tunnel in her vision is gone. Her bunched up muscles, her tense shoulders relax, and she keeps breathing in gulps of air in heaving gasps. Galatea blearily realizes Frank’s warmth is now on her arms, he is rubbing them to create some heat. He is doing it to c _omfort_ her. She finds herself sitting up straight as if at attention, as to not let all of her weight remain on him. Whichever gods, that still remain, knows how heavy she actually is.

He pulls her back against him, her back to his chest once more.

“Breathe, slow and easy. One thing at a time…”

She closes her eyes at that, the effect of his voice, hearing the uncertainty. Obviously, Frank Castle is not the type to offer support to the emotional or physically compromised. He had not done such things for a little while, she’d bet her police career on it. Galatea breathily tittered at the fleeting image of the ex-marine trying to help someone with a full blown panic attack.

He would probably frighten the person more. But at least, she isn’t a flopping fish on land, now, thanks to him.

The back of her head twinges in a new pain, the stitches are tight and unforgiving to her healing flesh. But she still lays her head against what she thinks is Frank’s shoulder, their proportions were not exactly a matching set to begin with. The strange thing though, he _lets_ her do it. The man didn’t complain, only kept to rubbing her arms to keep her bare skin warm. It is soothing motions, the callouses of his hands scratching against her soft skin, that comfort her. Their breathing becomes synced, as she can feel his chest expand and deflate with his lungs filling and emptying themselves. She matches him as an automatic response with their closeness.

They keep to that for maybe another lingering moment.

Galatea touches at her forehead, no relief to be found from the back of her head as she eases herself from his shoulder,” Sorry…”

The man behind her, this soldier with his broad shoulders, scarred heart and long, long legs, heaves out,” Don’t be.”

Galatea turns around halfway, peeking under some of her unbound hair to look at him.

Frank is leaning against the bedframe with those broad shoulders and back, he is wearing that Henley from last night, rumpled from movement. His knees are open as she is still sitting in between them— he is assessing her, she realizes, as those whiskey eyes are taking in her ruffled appearance.

He is contemplating— trying to search for that _strange_ change that happens, whenever she is unconsciously aware and has been put under the spotlight. Her eyes, those grays and browns, would _shift_. At first, it had been subtle. Or it had been until he had finally caught it last night.

The first time he met her as she introduced herself, he instantly knew that there is something she keeps hidden behind those gray brown eyes— she buried it so deep inside her.

It had been at that time where he thought that the woman in that leather jacket and impressive heeled boots would _devour_ him alive where he stood— that had been the shift, that change in her. Jack had taken a liking to her instantly whereas Frank had felt like she might be something close to lethal. But as they had continued their talk, as Jack kept begging for her attention and petting, Frank discovered a distance already placed between them. It had been born of something that put leagues of _difference_ between them as individuals. He had yet to determine what those differences were.

The second shift that happened had been when he arrived by elevator to their floor, returning from his own activities. He caught it, just as she turned away from the elevator opening on her. After a momentary silence, one of confusion, seeing that she looked ready to leave the apartment for her own activities to be done, Frank had watched as she left the elevator behind. He thought that she had forgotten something, but instead, in his confusion, he had watched as she had opened a completely different door, that of 22B, to save the waifish slip of a woman from that husband. Frank had never seen something so viciously restrained, so tightly wound— it was a righteousness that could sear through anything it touched. Or rather, what Galatea would go after with those unscarred dove hands.

Another shift had been when she had burst into the diner. It had been hours before the night shifts to end, hours after children would go to sleep for their next day at school, it is hours way too deep into the night for any regular person to still be awake. People like Frank were not those regular people. But when he had seen Marion coming in, he had that feeling that Galatea would be following soon after. Especially as he watched the redheaded woman, _little bird_ as his neighbor had dubbed her once, take out her cellphone and began to call for Galatea in rushed, hushed tones as she took to burrowing herself into the booth corner far from others. Galatea had come running, looking like an avenging angel, even in her pajamas.

Frank had left the diner to see if he could find Marion’s husband. He had left after sharing a look with the Grecian woman, who had shared her past of being a soldier with him. He remembered what that diner waitress, Betty, had called Galatea. He remembered how he thought that _goddess_ did, in fact, fit Galatea. The avenging angel with umber eyes, the righteousness of a goddess— the wrath and fury she displayed for someone who had been scorned or wronged.

It had happened yet again, after she had Marion’s husband, well, ex-husband now, by the ankle. He remembered the dark, unfamiliar look in those upturned gray-brown eyes. And he knew, _knew_ that she would have killed the husband— that shift, that lethality that she held within herself.

He knew then why she had said that phrase in the diner when they shared their history.

 _Eleútheron tò Eúpsychon_. _Freedom stems from valor_.

She had been born with valor threaded into her very soul, she is something of the old world— that _other_ that clings to her, it had been something startling, it had rocked him right off his own balance. She wasn’t a part of something bigger than herself. She is just of a different part of the world that he would never be able to comprehend.

But she isn’t untouchable. Her head wound could account for that.

Galatea breathes in deeply, sighing at the still pounding headache— there is no shift, no tilt to take him off balance once more. She does not even question why he is still in her apartment, he had taken to sleeping on her couch after he cleaned up the blood, fixed her door after properly disposing of the husband’s body for it to be found somewhere else and not close to the apartment complex.

She offers,” So… breakfast is on me.”

Frank snorted, eyeing the back of her head as she turns away,” Yeah… no.”

When she turned in her disbelief at his refusal, she looked ready to chew him out for it like his drill sergeants once had. He ignores her splutter of _excuse me?_ as he grabs the bowl he had placed on her bed— the bowl is what he had carried with him from her kitchen before he had rushed into her room when she had woken up, only to find her on the floor— and hands it to her. He wouldn’t trust her to cook anything or much less do anything else with a concentrated effort with the blunt trauma wound she had at the back of her head. The ex-husband may have been weak with his execution but that pan still did some damage to Galatea’s head, especially considering the amount of blood that had been left over.

It had still been a surprise that Galatea had remained conscious and aware— when she had broken the bones of the man’s ankles, it had shocked Frank considerably. She should have not been awake to begin with, much less moving to keep protecting Marion, even in her downed state.

What is in the bowl is something that Galatea recognizes through smell, after she accepts it from him with a small nod of gratitude. She peers back to him with a raised eyebrow and the corner of her mouth is quirked upwards.

“Rice?”

He stares at her, unwavering, unyielding,” Eat up.”

Those full lips, pale and chapped from last night’s excursion of blood loss from a metal pan, pull upwards even more at his command,” Yes, _sir_.”

He tries to not smile back, his own mouth still twitching in the effort it takes. There may be no shift this time, but he still is watching out for it. Hunter trots in, yowling for attention as he approaches both Frank and Galatea. The Aegean cat brushes past Frank with a smooth, friendly curl of his fluffy tail and he nudges his head at Galatea’s thigh before he is rewarded with scratches behind his ear.

Galatea finishes off her bowl as she pets Hunter, rubbing under his chin and giving his head one last pat before she helps herself back onto her feet. Frank is quick to follow right after as she leaves her bedroom to relieve herself of her bowl. Frank takes it from her and begins to clean it in the sink. He knows that she is rolling her eyes at his mother hen act.

But he realizes that she shifts on her feet, to look to her living room. He knows that she can see the pool of blood, _her_ blood, is gone. Frank is still holding onto the bowl, not drying it as he takes in on her reaction. There is a look, as if she is withdrawing herself from the rest of the world, she is sinking into something that he can never know for himself because it is her. Her own memories, her own thoughts, her own mind.

She is far away, where he cannot follow her.

And that revelation does a number to him. He grips the bowl slightly harder, his large hands are wet with water. The Grecian woman blinks and she has returned to herself— she looks elsewhere. Then she is moving to her front door, to the rack with her leather jacket and grabs it before she returns back to her kitchen, to him. Her feet are silent, sure in movement and not at all wobbly— she should be on bed rest, but he had a feeling she would only tolerate so much of his demands to look after her before she decided to have him leave her apartment.

She is reaching into some pocket of the inside of the leather jacket, a rustle of paper and soon enough she is revealing those papers to him. He does not speak, only raises an eyebrow and still holds onto the bowl. Frank watches as she is calmly placing these papers onto her island countertop, revealing his family’s names and the city’s _cemetery_.

The last page she places down for him to see is some sort of copy of a newspaper story.

Frank is frowning now, still holding onto the bowl, and looking to her for some sort of explanation. Those umber eyes of hers, there is tint of sorrow, it is her empathy mixed in with that lethality that he can now see too clearly. He understands them now, understands her and all she stands for.

“These are official papers for the records. Funeral, burial… and what they had said about _your_ family…”

He grunts out, his chest hurts. He knows, knows that his _kids_ , his _wife_ , had to be put somewhere now that they were _dead_. But now, _now_ , they were six feet fucking under. He had not been there, he had been in the hospital and had disappeared to lick his wounds before he finally decided to rent an apartment as he couldn’t bear to go to his own home.

He had bought that house with the open lawn, no white picket fence for him, and paid off the whole thing with what he had saved up. He had not returned to it since he had left it with his family to go to the carousel, he could not bear to not see his wife and kids to be waiting there for him. It was now a shell, empty and void of the life he created with Maria, it is nothing but reminders and memories of his lost family. The burning in his chest held testament to his loss and anger.

 _You_ ’ _re a good man_ , _Frank_ …

The bowl in his hands breaks, shatters into pieces and falls to the kitchen floor. He jerks, the pain that cuts into his palm is a surprise, he hadn’t realized that held that tightly onto the bowl. The blood mixes in with the sink water. And yet again, Galatea is looking at him with that sorrow, her empathy on a high rise.

 _Christ_ — “Sorry…”

She turns the burial papers over, shows the address for the cemetery and where the gravestones are for his family and they cover the pictures of the funeral ceremony. Where she even got those is beyond him but they are still there and for him to take, if he so wished it. She holds onto the newspaper copy before she looks back to him with understanding, not pity or sympathy— her righteousness, her lethality is tightly wound right back up within herself. They are not for her to spring just yet, because this is for him, all of this is for him, not herself.

“It’s fine, I’ve got more of those.”

Her words, they hold those unspoken ones between the two of them and hold them back.

The rise of her brow, the small corner of her mouth lifts, and again that curve of her neck is an enticing thing to him,” You can break more of the bowls, if you feel like it.”

The joke softens the next of her words, but not enough to have Frank really wanting to snap another person’s neck. And he really wants to do it all over again. Not seeing Galatea on the ground with a pool of blood coming from her or seeing Marion faint from shock and horror— but the cracking of the husband’s neck, that justice done for Marion, that she is now free of the abuse and the pain of it— he’d do it again.

“Someone with a lot of authority went to hiding the whole thing— I know its nothing, but this shows that there is something else on play than just what happened with your family. I’ll try to find some more information, but this is, even the funeral papers were sparse…”

He feels a shift in himself now. And Galatea watches, nods with only a slight tip of her chin. She understood his need for solitude, to lick his wounds again and chase away the pain all over again. But before he leaves, she is wrapping his hand with bandages and gauze after a spray of disinfectant to his cut palm. And he leaves her apartment with the funeral papers and the address in his other hand.

… … … … … …………….

Galatea slams her apartment door close, jerks to twist her keys to lock the door in vicious motions. She heads towards the other end of the hall, for the door to the apartment’s indoor staircase. Her blood is pumping, heart racing, thoughts flying.

She needed to get out _now_. Her headache still pounds thoroughly in her poor skull— she had removed the stitches since her mortal skin is healed now. But the agony is still there, beneath the surface of her flesh, carved into her skull with easy reminiscence of last night’s events.

Thundering out of the building, she is already hustling down past the mailboxes in the door space of the apartment complex’s front entrance. She only runs and runs.

People yell after her as she is pounding past vendor stands and crowds of the restless people of Hell’s Kitchen. She runs across streets, even with vehicles in motion, but she is careful to not run in front of cars. And she keeps powering on throughout the whole of the city.

She only stops after she notices that she is close to the front of a building with a familiar sign. When she nearly falls flat onto her face in front of said building, the bending of one knee and an open palm to the ground is what stops her face from kissing the ground with her forehead and nose. She did not need a wound to the front of her head too, she curses to herself with her carelessness.

“Miss Winters?”

After the detective returns to both feet to be firmly planted to the ground and wipes away her unscathed hand— not wanting to reveal  the small bit of blood on her palm to her new street companion since she didn’t want to explain how that could be a possibility along with the fast healing of her head wounds. Galatea turns to face the newcomer and is greeted with golden locks of medium length hair and blue, blue eyes on an ivory pale face. The other woman, with her lovely dress of a pretty shade of regal periwinkle and a nicely pressed dress coat, is holding onto a cupholder of coffees.

She smiles, solemnly to avoid looking too pensive,” Miss Page, good to see you again.”

“Oh, _wow_ , it is so nice to see you again, detective,” Karen moves closer to Galatea before taking the stairs to the front of the door of the building that reads _Nelson and Murdock_ ,” how have you been?”

Karen Page gives an appreciative smile when Galatea opens the door for her, to avoid juggling the coffees in the carton cupholder. The two gravitate closer inside the door space when Galatea takes the coffees to hold onto to allow Karen to take off her coat.

“Not much, got back from my vacation in Greece. I am on a bit more of leave to recover from a car accident, before I go back to work,” Galatea smiles, despite her lie.

 _Sokovia_ had been one hell of a _vacation_ , but Karen did not need to know about it. She follows after Karen’s long-legged pace which takes an effortless pace in those clicking heels.

“Did you have a good vacation? Accident? Did it happen in Greece or when you came back?”

Galatea smiles, chuckling at the flying questions that leaves Karen in rapid fire as they make their way up the stairs to the second floor of the building. Karen holds onto her jacket as Galatea refused to hand back the coffees.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine— just a bump during the night. And Greece… well, Greece is Greece— nothing too exciting, it was nice to be back home. I miss the beaches and the sea.”

The two make their way through the second floor hallway and approaches the door to the lawyering firm. Karen hums out thoughtfully at the soft truth that left Galatea unexpectedly.

“Well, I’m glad you are alright. Try to not to get hurt again, you’re one of the really good detectives in the precinct here.”

Galatea had chortled, tilting her head side to side as she continued her stroll with the blonde,” I’m not that great, Miss Page.”

Karen is shyly smiling now as she eyes Galatea’s cheekbones and jawline framed by the pitch black of her short hair and how the detective is dressed in athletic clothing fit for running. Karen had taken to Galatea like a moth to a flame, she had been eased from anxiety and fear for her life when Galatea had taken the homicide case over— despite the hostility of the other detectives and how things had ended so abruptly but cleanly on Karen’s end of the short stick. Karen and Galatea had become close. Galatea had that sort of effect, Karen hadn’t thought that she would get so close to the detective considering how their positions were.

Karen, simply put, liked Galatea.

When Galatea had come into the interrogation to dismiss the other detectives, the men had been intense in their questioning over Daniel’s death and Karen’s own involvement but then Galatea had interrupted the interrogation with a harsh clap back to them. She had come in with a bun so severe that it must have been giving Galatea a headache at the time, Karen had gotten a headache just looking at that bun. The sight of a leather jacket and those impressive heeled boots really did Karen in though, she had been thoroughly thrown off balance. She had been so shocked that when Matt and Foggy had come in, she had taken a few more minutes to even realize that they were there at all.

A female homicide detective with a high rank— and the detectives took her seriously, they had glared at the dismissal but complied, not even a peep of a complaint. And Karen had known then, Galatea would take no nonsense. If the homicide detective had been hit, she would return it more than twofold. But if she also knew that a mistake had made way into the case, she’d take responsibility for the whole thing, no matter how bad the result is. She had respect in the 15th precinct.

Galatea is not one to mess with.

And Karen would only ever be grateful with the amount of risk that Galatea took upon herself to look after Karen and close the case on the real, hard truth despite the clap back from the press and _Fisk_. Karen Page would never forget the comforting hand on her shoulder when she had nearly been killed by Clyde, she would never forget that tight hug from the much shorter detective when she had been looked after for nearly eating drywall when yet another assassin came after her in her own apartment.

Karen would also never forget that fierce look that had the court hang onto every word of the detective when she gave out the truth of how Daniel’s death really came to be. The press ate it up, sent the word out and the whole of Hell’s Kitchen took the value of the truth and hung onto every bit of it. Yeah, Galatea Winters is one hell of a detective and real force of nature.

When the door is in sight, Galatea hands back the coffees in the cupholder.

“I need to return back to my apartment, rest up a bit more— last night had been something else.”

Karen is surprised,” Oh, you don’t want to see Matt? Or Foggy?”

Galatea looks to the door with the last names of the two lawyers, that solemn look is now more of a distant one. Karen always wondered why. Why the distance, why the sorrow that clings to the detective like a ghost. The metal plates on the metal chain that hangs around the detective’s neck remind Karen that the world is not exactly the same in the detective’s eyes.

“I’ve seen Murdock recently, had breakfast before I had to do some grocery shopping. I’m pretty sure you all have my number, even Foggy.”

The blond presses her mouth together before she smiles wide,” Yeah, you’re right. Come and drink with us, some time. We haven’t been going through too many cases lately, nothing world ending or something like that.”

Galatea snorts,” World ending, huh?”

That distant look returns but not before Galatea opens the door for Karen and she waves her goodbye,” I’ll see you around, Miss Page.”

Karen watches as the detective leaves, those sorrows and that distant look are still clinging to the shorter woman. When she hears the drawl of the two lawyers playfully bickering and laughing, she closes the door before she announces that she has coffee.

… … … … … …………….

Galatea returns to the apartment complex, gets up to her floor level and opens her door. Frank’s apartment door opens as she steps past her doorframe. Damn, his large frame still appears overwhelming in the narrow hallway. The man looks to her now, sees her running clothes.

“Good run?”

She nods,” Something like that… heading out for food?”

It is lunch hour rush now. A man like Frank needed a lot of food for refuelling his body’s demanding need of energy.

“Yeah, yeah, I am.”

She nods to his words, closes her eyes briefly to let his deep voice take residence in her soft spot for him. When she takes the keys out of her doorknob, she chucks them to her door stand.

“You didn’t need to give me those files, didn’t need to tell me something I should have already known… Why?”

Why give him the information that rips into him, shreds his soul and heart and leaves an even more gaping hole in him? Why do him the kindness of finding the exact location of his family’s gravestone? Why care at all for him and his dead family?

Well. That’s a good question, would it not be?

She stops from taking off her jacket, the sweat absorbing material keeps all the heat of her body’s exertion in and she dislikes the overwhelming smell of the city on it. She halts from moving further into her door space. Sighs. And she turns to spot him waiting and peering to look at her face, still assessing and contemplative in his genuine question. He does not move, because he knows she is not _just_ an officer of the law— her other ability and skillsets unknown by him. But he is also waiting for the thing that is writhing underneath her skin— the second heartbeat to her own, that shift that resides in her gray-brown eyes.

She observes him, takes in his appearance in the brightness of the hallway— at least that is one good thing of the narrow space in this building. She blinks owlishly at the huge man, breathes in too lightly.

Her plans, everything that has led up to this and to what would come after, it feels like it’s for nothing, not worth the amount of damage, the hurt in his eyes and the beat of his heart that she can hear— all those wrongs, all those crimes committed— she can’t tell him, not yet.

His face is peppered in varying shades of bruises, lip split at one corner and even though he tried to shift his hands from her line of sight, she notes the newly split, chapped skin of his knuckles. She sighs, disappointed at how she had not noticed all of it before— she’d been caught up in how he had _held_ her. Those split knuckles must have been his coping routine, punch something until he wouldn’t stop or physically could not continue to do so.

Is it to punish himself or for something else?

The both of them do not move, because something small and so, so fragile existed between the two of them. She believed it as nothing more than a kinship. But he had yet to determine this tenuous _thing_ between them.

There needs to be a check, a balance…

She is about to answer with a half question, opens her mouths and he still looks to with that assessing look in his whiskey eyes.

“Oh, you’re here!”

She closes her mouth, presses her lips tight and Frank closes his eyes like he has a headache.

The two looks to find Marion hauling a rope and sled, it held a couple of boxes, she had come from her old apartment of 22B. When she comes closer, she is smiling so widely, so brightly, and it tugs at Galatea’s heart.

“I hope you don’t mind that I’m here so early. Are you, are you going out for a run?”

Right, _right_ , Marion had texted Galatea, had asked if she could live with her until she found a new place to stay since Jessica had personal things coming up. The PI had a new case, one that she did not want Marion getting hurt just because she would be in close range of Jessica. Galatea did not have the heart to refuse the little bird, especially when Marion insisted that she could not clearly remember the events of the night before. When she had woken up at Jessica’s apartment with partial memory, probably the trauma and fear had blocked out the memory, Jessica had called and sounded surprised too.

And it was only after the initial shock that passed when Jessica berated Galatea on her recklessness. Galatea could only find herself amused, all things considering that Jessica Jones is no saint herself. Jessica would have done the same, with the right amount of force needed to push her as well.

Marion, a ball of sunshine and life, her voice faded off at the end of her string of words. Galatea is only _smiling_ — she could not help it when it came to young, lively Marion and the fact that she came back at all. “Pete” grumbles as if displeased by something, he kept a neutral face as to not frighten the younger woman away. But in those whiskey eyes, he’s surprised too.

He is shooting Galatea a look that promised a _talk_ later.

“Already did, Marion. Where is the rest of your stuff, I’ll help you get them.”

Galatea moves accordingly, only winking at the man opposite of her as he looked between the two women. He had the good sense to only blink in his contemplation of whether he should help or just stay out of the way.

“I can make some lunch for you too, sir.”

Marion now looks up to “Pete” with those lovely bottle green eyes, all wide and bright.

He can’t find it in himself to say a blunt _no_ , to the young widow now. He does, however, note that she no longer wears the ring on her hand. His eyebrow raises slightly but even then, he helps Marion and Galatea move all her things to Galatea’s apartment space.

Frank knew that he is completely, utterly _fucked_.


	8. Mortal Sin

**She continued forward, hands bloodied and face tearstained, hip aching with movement. Nothing more than a wraith, neither living nor dead. She is going into that warehouse— to kill them, to kill them _all_. Judge, jury and fucking executioner. She once passed judgement with blade and bow, so very long ago when she would be called upon.**

**That time was long ago. And she no longer answered to those calls. She had been forgotten, abandoned from the people of the bygone times. She is one of the forsaken. And she will reassert her once rescinded power for those who have forfeit their lives for robbing her of her cherished, her love.**

**The single piece of paper, an address to the warehouse, had been recovered from her kill. Her prey— the _murderer_ , thrice killer— left behind for the prospect of finding the others who hides like rats. They have fled from her— they will receive their punishment soon enough, they will all find their ends soon enough.**

**She finds the warehouse empty, after passing through the doors— the hinges squeals, the metal bends, until she enters fully. There is no one left within. The place has remnants of who once inhabited the place— weapons and empty clips or magazines, plateless trucks or motorcycles left behind. Nothing is there, no one is left.**

**The tales of the stale wind whispers of the rats. The breeze laments of their flight from the warehouse, from the city, from _her_. The tale leaves the same disgusting taste upon her tongue. The heavy disappointment, the scorn and the wrath and the fury leaves her in a flurry of the ancient tongue of her people, her mouth bares familiar fangs in the song. The warehouse trembles, the foundations are weak— she could tear this place down to nothing and leave it only as ashes and dust.**

**The silence is all there is left.**

**Her image, one reborn and molded for the golden, kind hearted knight, is howling. Her second heartbeat is racing and her mind spiraling until it comes to a stop. She roars all her wrath— olden tales of wars and battles long past— her fury— of agonizing pain and the dried blood spilt of her golden lover— her sorrows— the love, the combination of the golden soul and the silver mirth that has long stopped bleeding from her— and the earth trembles beneath her, the skies continue to weep. Nothing is left.**

**She does not feel anything anymore. Nothing is left in her. A clean slate. She closes her eyes, deeply inhales before reopening her eyes. Her new image, her transformation begins with one more inhale. The shift is welcome, the familiarity of the alteration a thing born of the primeval and ancient, and she is beginning anew.**

**She exits the warehouse, without a word uttered and her past image’s last exhale.**

**The people, the world, will know it all.**

**A new hunt is on the horizon.**

… … … … … …………….

There are not many who are in the store, so it is a good start, Galatea thinks rather blithely. She never liked big crowds, never liked expansive rooms or places filled with too many people— too many things could go wrong when there is no clear exit. There are the tall tale sounds of moving carts, the shuffling of pairs of feet, the dinging of the cashier stations— these are all normal things, especially in a grocery store. A normal day, to do something as normal a task of grocery shopping in Hell’s Kitchen.

A normal day that seems to become something hard to obtain— another thing Galatea thinks upon rather bitterly.

Galatea has Marion safely tucked by her side, ignoring curious looks from those who are passing by the pair of women. But no, this is not what makes Galatea grits her teeth at and think these bitter, bitter thoughts— of not being able to have normal days to do mundane tasks such as grocery shopping and having the dullest day known to mankind.

She remembered being told by the blonde-haired birdman. With his sharpshooter tongue and racing mind, something he’d always had from his youth, that she seemed to be the only person who liked _dull_ and _tedious_ things. And someone who would, quote, “become bitter and salty”, of such things not going her way.

Galatea only told him to shut up and don’t miss during that mission in France. He only laughed at her, calling her _Lionheart_ for the first time. Galatea had tripped in her shock of being called something so familiar and by even older past friendships in her past. He did not know that she had once been called that in another life— another time of crisis, of oppression, of fear.

But no, disregarding her thoughts of the past, what makes her think more and more acrimonious thoughts—

It is the man that bumps into Marion, the redhead is pushing the cart along, after picking her favorite snacks from the shelf. The man is hustling away, as though flying through the wind is his life’s greatest achievement to accomplish and he is failing in that regard. The fool he is, moves along without muttering out a goddamn apology and ignoring Marion’s startling gasp. Galatea turns her head, staring the man down with a glare. Something shifts in her calculating umber eyes. A thought, dangerous and dark as her pitch-black hair, settles in her mind.

The man continues on. Oh, bitter, bitter thoughts still lingering and ready to be known, just on the tip of her tongue. Galatea continues to think dangerous thoughts; of chasing after him with the fury that is itching to claw its way out of her skin.

Marion giggles away the surprise that shot like adrenaline through her.

“People are sure in a rush, huh?”

Galatea flicks her eyes, assessing Marion from the crown of her head to the back of her heels. Marion gets the message and checks her pockets, but nothing seems to be amiss when she gives Galatea a headshake. Her purse is still in the cart’s seat, nestling between strawberries and angel cakes. The detective frowns, turning her head back to look after the man who disappears around the corner of the aisle.

A distraction then.

A cluck of Galatea’s tongue is all she decides to settle on after she retrieves a carton of milk to put into their grocery cart, “Some people are just assholes, Marion.”

Out of sight… out of mind, right?

Galatea rooted basic instruction into Marion last night; to always check herself when someone bumps into her, always keep her hands in her pockets and on her purse whenever in rushing crowds, and always be on the lookout for someone who could be following her. Basics, an outline to begin until the need for detail can take root in it all.

Over the last parts of the week, the detective took to teaching the little bird how to throw a mean hook, especially once she learned Marion had the luck of being born ambidextrous. Galatea took vicious pride in that small talent. Marion could take anyone by surprise, once they learn she can do some life-altering damage with not just one punch, but two with both fists. And Galatea took to teaching her just that.

Tonight, before dinner, she’d teach her how to fight against her flight or fight instincts. Because if there has been one thing that Galatea learned thoroughly, it is people like Marion— those with kind hearts and too gentle souls— they lack _conviction_. They lack that determination to hurt, to bite down and to dig out and to rip pain from others. She is going to teach Marion how to fight dirty, how to claw and kick and become a spitfire to ensure no one dumb enough would ever think to come within ten feet of Marion with the intent to hurt her.

And those bitter, bitter thoughts about that man. Galatea had noticed he had been following the two of them since they had left the apartment— he would have to wait. For now.

“Come on, let’s get to the floral shop,” Galatea pushes the cart, tucking Marion even closer to her side with a protective arm, “we got one more stop before going back to the apartment.”

Her voice, small yet authoritative, just like herself. But sharp, lethal on the inside, _just like herself_. Galatea had always been this way. Clint always said that this is what set herself further away from the rest of the team, not because of her ability or other skillsets.

And it is why Clint always tried his best to keep her company during gala parties and the times he would actually be at the Stark Tower— to see _Galatea_ , to keep her from being alone by herself. Because _gods_ forbid, she would probably turn dismemberment or beheading, if she felt up to it or was just _bored_. It is why the archer, despite thinking of himself as some disaster and dumpster fire, tried so hard to keep her involved. Galatea took flight and waited for no one, people had to learn to keep up with her.

Clint had been the only one to keep up, naturally. And then the rest of the team happened.

Marion blinked at the whiplash, “Oh, okay.”

… … … … … …………….

Frank blinks, stopping at the corner of the street at the whims of a small streetlight and at Jack huffing out at the sight of Marion and Galatea. The two not yet entering the graveyard gates. Between the pair is a few bags of groceries and a bouquet of flowers in both of their hands.

Was one of them paying respects for someone?

Then again, Frank had deduced that Galatea had paid respects to his family too. He had found them the night he gotten those papers from Galatea. He had found that someone had left peonies on Maria’s gravestone— they were Maria’s favorite. How the detective knew is beyond him, but he had a feeling that Galatea knew some of Frank’s old buddies. He’d have to make a few calls… but Curt already knew, Curt always knows.

Curt had been the one to pay for the plots of land and the funeral ceremonies.

“Huh…”

Galatea had her own dead to pay homage to. He’d respect that by staying the furthest away he possibly could. He did not want to know who she buried, who she lost—

Jack echoes Frank, gray-blue eyes following the pair and chest rising excitedly but remains by Frank’s side. The pit always followed after Galatea when the mutt had the chance— not because Galatea had a treat in her pocket— but because the dog was naturally attracted to her. That sense that all animals had when it came to judging people ranked Galatea as someone worthy to follow.

Frank had once joked to Galatea that she might as well adopt Jack.

He remembered the quirk of her full mouth, the head tilt and the laughter that followed. She had told him off, said that the cats were enough for her and that he better be taking good care of Jack or she would box his ears in. He remembered that he wanted to laugh with her too before he quickly had to remind himself to not. This stage of awkward disconnection and the simultaneous gravitation had him on edge.

Frank recognizes the distance. It has always been there, placed there by himself. It aches with the distinction, aches some more when he remembers why he first put it up. To become closer to not just a _detective_ , an officer of the law, but to become closer to the woman who lived across from him, the one whose eyes shifts with unmatched lethality and whispers of untold secrets far larger of herself— it fucking terrified him. Curt would be laughing at Frank before threatening to beat Frank up with his prosthetic leg because of the way he distanced himself away from Galatea.

Curtis Hoyle would have called Frank Castle a goddamn idiot for even trying to keep himself away.

The woman who patched him up, without so much as flinching at how much he allowed himself to get fucked up, after killing people for some snippet of information of who had been involved. She didn’t even blink when she confessed only a slip of her own life to him, to tell him that she thought no less of him for what he had done, committed— they were no longer soldiers in the sandbox. The both of them were just killers with glorified titles and ranks. And that had just been the start of becoming more than just neighbors.

And Galatea knew that too— she knew everything, probably more than Curt too.

Frank notices a man, average in height and standing out too much with a hat that spoke volumes of his stupidity. The man was shit when it came to concealing himself around the corner of the other building, camera in hand and pointed right at Galatea and Marion. Frank knew that Galatea had picked up on the man following after the two— her compact figure stood in front of Marion’s slightly taller, slender frame as she and the redheaded little bird continued past the gates and shut it behind them. Galatea knew that Marion was the target, not herself.

A shot of heat, the need to protect, rises up in Frank’s throat. His pulse becoming livid at the mere recollection of the puddle of blood from Galatea’s head wound, the fear and the trauma of Marion. Every instinct of Frank’s lit themselves on fire when the man with the camera took one last shot of the cemetery gates with Galatea’s and Marion’s backs to him. And every instinct is bleeding out from him in an air of hostility.

Frank bared his teeth, when the mystery man notices Frank watching him. The man had the good sense to run. And Frank took pleasure in hearing Jack’s protective growl as the two of them chase after the man with camera.

… … … … … …………….

“Who’s this, Galatea?”

The wind picked up. Galatea’s curled locks covers most of her face while Marion’s braid remains still and hanging over her slender shoulder. The strands of red from her bangs follow the will of the winds and the song of the world surrounds the pair. The wind is a careful caress, a lover’s sigh and a cooling kiss— and she knows the song well. A cemetery is not a place to linger, or rather, this is a place that the living should not remain side by side with the dead.

The city’s cemetery goes on and on, some acres in the hundreds. There are rolling hills and there are some flat plains that holds household names, whole families, individuals with no successors to follow after them— so many dead, so much history buried underneath the earth. And the world continues on, with both the living and the dead. Nature continues, the skies and the earth and the people all go on. Cycles begin anew once more, seasons and humanity’s nefarious plans forge the physical paths.

How cruel of the world.

Galatea’s own graveyard is spread out— all over the world, in places of ruins and places long buried under the rest of civilizations. Some are even in the monuments that have been declared as _wonders_. This graveyard is too small for Galatea’s own rich history— rightfully so, it is why she rarely comes to cemeteries such as this one. They suffocate her with shadows that she should not know, ghosts that sometimes whisper and lament their woes with the song of the wind.

And she remembers why she hates coming to holy grounds. These places of the dead and the forgotten and the in-between, grounds meant for reverence and wrought with mysticism. But this cemetery, she always came back to— for repentance, for punishment, for absolution. Her ghosts linger to haunt her, her crimes stain her hands. How cruel for her to live while others do not.

The flowers, vivid sapphire forget me nots and crimson tiger lilies, are laid gently upon the grave’s tombstone.

“Someone who went too early… he loved the wrong person, they got him killed…”

Marion’s inquisitive evergreen eyes carefully pick up the details. “You cared for him a lot.”

“Once upon a time…” And Galatea smiles rather sharply, all teeth and full mouth a pale imitation of pink petals.

“Did you love him?” Marion’s innocence is a crucifix, soothing and holy and pure.

And sometimes, it is something that burns.

Galatea does not comment, simply looks to the stone. She had memorized the engraving, she damn near etched the stone itself with her own hands. The detective blinks, a small inhale and exhale before she carefully lays her hand on Marion’s shoulder. A graceful smile has the younger woman beam back.

“Time to get going, don’t want the cats waiting and it’s time to make dinner.”

Marion giggles,” It is not like the cats are going to kill us in our sleep.”

Marion stops giggling once she realizes that Galatea is quiet.

The detective only smiles real slow.

… … … … … …………….

The diner is the same as it always is. Never too full, but never empty either.

Today is somewhat busier, due to the weekend. The customers are relaxed, the rush to return to work is not present, the people take their times enjoying their families or the company they have. A blond-haired man and a redhaired woman are sitting in Galatea’s usual booth. One has a coffee mug and the other has a smoothie.

They’ve got on sunglasses and dark, inconspicuous clothes— and yet no one picks up on the vibe of them being dangerous. People just know to stay away from them and not look too long. But it doesn’t stop some people from looking, watching— waiting for the peace to be dropped and shattered.

That is Hell’s Kitchen usual attitude towards the mysterious and the strange.

The two don’t watch Frank, they are looking for someone else— _waiting_ seems more appropriate. But Frank does not blink at them, he’s too tense as he is pissed off, incensed as he remains in his thoughts. Jack carefully sits on the booth couch before Frank sits down at a booth of his own choosing.

The man with the camera had vanished in an alleyway. The only thing left of his existence had been that ridiculous hat in the middle of the alley, it had been left there to mock Frank in his failure. But he’d be damned to let that slippery bastard get away with it. Frank would make sure to exchange words with Galatea.

“Pete.”

Betty had an amused smile on her aged face, black coffee in a fresh pot at the ready.

She never backed down from what she had named Frank’s “brooding sessions”. She never let him get away with anything. The waitress earned his respect way back when he had seen Galatea get scolded like some rebelling teenager. But that was only because Galatea looked ready to wallop some actual teenagers for causing a mess in Betty’s section of the diner.

It was clear that in some ways, Betty treated Galatea like her own kid. And it was clear that Galatea would always be hellbent on being protective over Betty— the detective always did the small, offhanded tasks of a waitress to help the workload. They had history, they had formed a familial tie long before Frank’s arrival— they had more solid grounds than Frank would ever allow himself with Galatea.

Frank nods, “Ma’am.”

When a child screams, it catches everyone’s attention. No matter if the people are some superspy in the favorite booth of a detective, no matter if it’s an ex-Marine playing as a civilian, no matter if it’s civilians just wanting a good meal at a respectable diner— people are going to watch a screaming child in an isolated space.

And this kid is throwing down with an old-fashioned temper tantrum— the whole nine yards of screaming, kicking, and bawling.

His parents are trying to calm him down, another waitress is offering something sweet to calm the brat down, and an elderly couple are also giving their own input. Betty chuckles, still amused, still unfazed by an everyday thing of life. She’s seen all and done all. She pours Frank a cup and takes his usual order.

But this time, she lingers and she’s looking straight into Frank’s soul. It is the same look that Galatea had when they first met in the hallway. And Frank can’t tell if Galatea had copied Betty, or is the older woman learned that look from his neighbor. Either way, it had Frank tense up some more.

“I remembered when my son used to do that, he mellowed out after my husband was gone.”

Frank took that tidbit with a gulp full of his coffee, muttering an apology.

“You have kids, Pete?” Betty watches the kid calm down when the mother is hugging him, smothering him in loving kisses to his face.

Frank shakes his head and Betty only places the fresh pot down onto the table. He doesn’t want to remember the excitement of his Lisa, his little girl, hugging onto him so reverently when he had returned home for the first time being away from her. He did not want to remember how his heart broke when Frankie had burst in hysterical tears for not _recognizing_ his own father. Frank had been deployed from the time of Frankie being conceived to his first birthday.

“My boy, my Elli, he was just like you.”

Frank tensed up. Betty patted his shoulder. There is this fond look on her wrinkled face, the love of a mother. It makes Frank want to bolt right out the door.

“He had a gentler soul, you see. Elli loved art, he had sketchbooks full of his drawings. He joined up when money got tight. After that gambling nitwit ate a bullet for the trouble he brought back home,” Betty scowled,” Elli took a job as a mechanic, kept him off the field as much as possible.”

Frank knew now that Betty learned that lethality from Galatea. Because Galatea is all shadows and secrets wrapped into a solid form with that lethal will of hers— and no one could ever be a match to her. Betty came as a good second, however.

Frank listened to Betty.

“You’re taking care of her, right?”

Frank’s heart nearly stopped dead at the assumption. Betty laughed at the look on his face.

“My boy, my Elli, he ended up going out onto the field to fix up something. I didn’t hear from him for months, and then all of a sudden, I got two officers at my door…” She took a breath in, shuddering a little as she put a hand over her heart, “They told me they couldn’t retrieve the _body_. I kicked them out, told them they were no good and they ruined my boy and that they couldn’t have the decency to try to get him back to home, to _me_.”

But there is a fierce look in Betty’s eyes, the look only a mother could wield, and that is something that cannot be copied. Frank knew that look intimately, because Maria had it too. It is a different type of lethal, and yet, Galatea shared that same look with Betty. Frank had seen it, once. Just when she had taken in tandem to beat the shit out of Marion’s ex-husband.

“… she told me she had connections, even with her having retired and all. She promised to bring my Elli home to me.”

Frank blinked, cracking his neck fast to look back up to Betty. The waitress smiles a fiercesome expression, all fire and full of pride and _gratefulness_.

“She brought him back, a whole month later. When he came off the plane, his coffin had been wrapped with her old flag,” Betty wiped the tears away, aged face still bright and eyes holding a wicked contentment,” she told me that he would take care of it, that she didn’t need it anymore. I asked her to be one of his carriers, and I specifically asked for the shortest of his old mates.”

Frank only blinked again, missing the fact that the old woman had made a small jab at Galatea’s height. He missed the looks passed with the blond-haired man and the redhaired woman in Galatea’s booth. He missed the smiles of pride and the snicker from the man. The redhead drank through the straw of her smoothie with an arched brow of smug elegance.

Betty sighed, “There aren’t many like you, and the _goddess_ , in this day and age. So, I’m trusting you to look after her, Pete. And Jack, too.”

Frank choked when he gulped down the rest of his second cup of coffee. The pair in Galatea’s booth are gone now, no longer waiting and now on the move. A generous tip is all there is left, carefully tucked under the empty mug of coffee.

“You and I both know that she can take care of herself, ma’am.”

Betty’s eyes glittered darkly, both amused and knowing, “We do, don’t we?”

… … … … … …………….

Galatea should have known to drop the habit of looking out for a coward’s ambush. She should have known that someone would come knocking on her door instead. But she still got surprised when she heard the determined knocking on her front door.

Bitter, bitter thoughts continue to form in her mind.

Marion looked up, expression born of innocence and curiosity. Galatea shook her head, pointed to the stove as an order to watch the sizzling meat and popping spices and seasoning. Marion hummed committedly but still took to being watchful with small glances. She picked up that habit up on her own.

Always be on the lookout, take to multitasking when in a situation— look out for exits but also the weaknesses of opponents. Know which the best strategy is; to dig one’s heels into the ground and stay or know when to run from a fight that can’t be won.

Galatea contemplates about the registered pistol and her badge, reflects upon things like how Marion now takes inquiring glances at Hunter and Shadow thinking they might scare her or how Galatea still keeps Frank on his toes when she smiles like the devil just to antagonize him. She thinks about the itching in her skin after she opens the door to find two people that she had only a shade of a guess as to why they are here in the first place.

And she deliberates about wanting to slam the door in their faces.

The spider, with her silk spinning fingers, smiles an arsenic smirk— sweet but poisonous. It is a smile that Galatea matches whilst she bares her teeth. On the spider’s left, is one of two birdmen, with his assessing eyes and sharpshooter mouth. His shit-eating grin acts as a buffer between the arsenic smile of the spider and the burning in Galatea’s throat.

“Romanoff, Barton…”

Cognitive recalibration; the spider with her silk spinning fingers once told Galatea about it and the blond-haired birdman had also told Galatea about how the spider termed it as such. It was the spider’s term for striking someone in the head hard enough to knock them out, hard enough to take them out but not to kill. Just thinking back to that has the back of Galatea’s head positively _ache_.

Nat never accomplished it when she and Galatea would spar on those once-in-a-blue-moon days. Such a day that someone decided to piss off whatever cosmic entities that truly existed in the universe and that would lead to the two pitting _against_ one another. The spider always said that Galatea is just one of those people that could never be taken down— probably the only one of those people. Galatea had always been on another level compared to everyone else, even compared to her blue-eyed Brooklyn boy. It is why Nat always told Galatea that she both hated and loved Galatea.

It was never about Nat being competitive. It was about the fact that Galatea could survive, survive without others, survive by herself. Galatea could live while others would not. The thought of not being taken out at _all_ , meant that to _kill_ Galatea would take too much. The price would be too high— and that could demoralize just about anyone.

But it also meant, that Galatea would live while anyone else— no, _everyone_ — could die.

And the spider with her silk spinning fingers feared that after everyone else is dead, Galatea would be _alone_. And it always killed Nat a little about that terrifying thought of Galatea— not that she ever spoke about it.

Whatever riot of expression is on Galatea’s face, emotions probably ranging from surprised to dead in the inside, had Nat laugh. It is not easy to make her the _Black Widow_ laugh so wholesomely, Galatea let it bloom a warmth in her chest for a moment longer. She cooled herself back to be a thousand percent done with how this day is turning out, tilting her head and taking in the two standing just outside her territory.

Clint mercifully kept quiet. Sometimes, he had those small moments of absolute clarity and brilliant fortitude.

“Marion?”

The pair stilled at Galatea’s low timbre calling out for someone in her apartment. And when a quiet response came from within said apartment, Galatea only responded as she stared point blank at both Nat and Clint. The detective’s deadeye stare daring them to reveal themselves to an unknown someone— they took the hint and remained quiet.

“I’m stepping out to get the mail, keep an eye on the stove.”

Here’s the difference between Clint and Nat.

Natasha— _Natalia_ —had a wry smile, the kind where she could both mask but also show her true colors. It is the combined expression of a blade’s edge and her emotions— half and half of each. And it always got to Clint, always tore him in the inside with past guilts shared between him and Nat. Galatea always needed to look away from it, she used to have that same kind of smile but now it is in the form of her bared teeth.

Clint, oh, Clint. It is his words— he used them as both shield and sword, he would say everything and nothing about himself. The man with a bow and arrow, the only one who called Galatea _Lionheart_ and _Softie_. After the whole incident with the scepter and Loki, Clint had been a wreck, said he was _ruined_. The blond-haired man had so much self-deprecation that could only match to Galatea’s own. And that broke Galatea’s heart every time his laugh would be flatter, heavier than his usual bark or snicker.

At the mention of the incident, it makes Galatea evoke memories on how she even met Clint in the first place. They first collided into one another in Instanbul— which has experienced millennia of cultures and traditions and peoples clashing and evolving together. She remembered finding him drunk off of _raki_. She recalled having seen him gambling once— when gambling used to a legal sort of transactions back in the day. She always reminisced on how young he used to be and how he thought that just as she had— he thought himself to be able to judge between vice and virtues of others and how to use his bow and arrows to pass judgement. She had other methods, but they had shared the same sentiment all the same; as judge, jury and executioner.

She remembered that he was _seventeen_ that fateful day of meeting him, and hell, she could not remember her own age back then.

The city would always be a vast network of black-market criminals. It is the grand site of an open bazaar for all trades of any kind, with its reputation that would always keep its inhabitants as a safe haven. An open buffet for the unknowing or unwilling.

A young Clint had thought of it as a _target-rich_ environment, for the hellion’s sake of mind. Galatea knew it as the shark’s den, seeing right through it whilst she was the illusion, the mirage in the desert with no one the wiser. The bazaar would lure people in and drag back in all those who had second thoughts. Only those who truly belonged could venture in and out— but the sharks and the scavengers would never know someone as dangerous as Galatea. And Clint back then did not know her either— and yet he had clung to her like a fixed obsession.

A young Clint had left the bazaar with Galatea on that fateful day. But only after the events of his pockets being swiped in half an hour, when someone gifted him with his very first black eye an hour after that and he had gotten onto the radar of an opium dealer— who never took to Clint’s jokes and sarcasm and wits within six hours. And he followed after her, like an admiring duckling, despite the fact that he witnessed her taking down a group of six men with her bare hands and a wooden table to save him.

Another tale for another time, unfortunately.

Who would have known that in the very same city, a decade or so later, he would chase a teenage Natalia Romanova through the same marketplace— Clint received another black eye after he did, in fact, catch up to her. That would be the only time he would catch up to her, because only the two of them knew that she _allowed_ him to find her when she would see him again, years later.

This had been way back when she had the reputation that made grown men stay awake through all the nights and before she would later become a target of HYDRA and SHIELD. All before he would craft a nascent plan to convince her to defect, to start over and live her own life. There is a lot of history between Clint, Natasha and Galatea— disconnected as it is, but still there for the city to have experienced.

Both Clint and Galatea knew that Nat probably, not since she could _walk_ , would ever need back up or protection— not even an extra set of hands. And that she had extremely few, few fears— even fewer that she would ever admit to _name_.

And one of those fears is knowing there is a difference between them, the trio of them that they are, compared to the others of the Avengers.

They were what is under every child’s bed, what creeped in the closet in the dead of night. They were the whispers in the dark, the yawning creaks of the floor, what mothers would warn children about when they would do bad deeds and the consequences would be bloody. They were not clean, not pure. They were the good guys now, but they would never be able to wipe away all the dirt, blood, and their committed crimes and evil from history— what they have committed would never be undone, just buried under others.

Clint, Nat and Galatea were the monsters.

But Nat’s fear is for herself. How she could affect the others with what she has done— she could spoil America’s Greatest Soldier, how she could corrupt and seduce others. One of Galatea’s own is knowing that same difference is compared to _everyone_. The fear, her fear, is that Clint and Nat would never understand that _Galatea_ was— is— the worst of them all.

She had lifetimes, she had centuries, she had nearly a whole damn millennium. She had the whole damn universe to have seen it all, done all, and create the example for the rest to follow. Everyone, even the two of them, were pale _imitations_ to Galatea.

And Galatea knew, that she could easily slip back into what she used to be. She had been willing to do it with Marion’s husband, after all. And she still had plans that needed to be seen through— nothing but more blood, more pain, more suffering would be following her in the shadows. She would not drag others with her, except those who needed to be punished.

“Are you happy here?”

That is a good question, is it not?

Nat tilts her head, the spider with her silk spinning fingers tries to read the detective with a small smile tugging the corners of her painted lips upwards. Always, always does the spider tug at the strings, tries to tug free something from her— a reaction, an answer. But only because Galatea had always been good at never giving her tells to just anyone.

“This is not my home.”

It was never her home. Nowhere is her home, she has not had one for so long. Not the beaches, shores or the oceans that reside back in Greece that hold the venerable history and primordial secrets of the world, of _her_. Not the sands and the dunes of the sandbox, where the winds compose their elegies of the battles and wars of the past. Not the filthy streets, polluted air and blood-stained shadows of Hell’s Kitchen that holds the mysteries and secrets of the city.

She turns her head, catches a glint in the distance and her bitter thoughts returns.

Never out of sight, never out of mind. But everyone gets their dues, one way or another.

She relents though, a world’s worth of weariness sinking deep in her, “How is everyone else?”

Clint smiles, nervous energy rampant with the way his arms move to cross over his chest, “They miss you. We are all kind of just running around like headless chickens, trying to fix the damage done after what happened… the twins, they ask about you.”

Pietro, the boy with silvern hair, who had been enhanced with unmatched speed and Wanda, whose control came in the form of crimson energy could move and manipulate things with her own enhancement. The Maximoff twins had been something of revelation to Galatea. They had been quick to grow attached to Galatea, even though they only came to know each other for over the span of a couple of days. All of that only came to be when Galatea had been recalled to assist with absolving the disaster of Tony’s cultivated mistakes— he had created Ultron, he attempted to control something that was never meant to be controlled.

Someone comes into the space of the apartment complex entrance, a man with a baseball cap low and covering his face. His dog, a pitbull with blue-gray eyes that hones in on Galatea almost instantaneously and barks joyfully. Nat smiles sharply in amusement. Clint takes note of the man. Galatea closes her mailbox and turns her head once more.

“Return to your nest, return to your web, for you are far from home.”

The pair look back to Galatea, both blinking slowly. Those were their phrases to retreat, they meant being compromised and to get the hell out. And this meant the end of their being together for only this brief get together— this meant _goodbye_.

“The kids, they miss seeing you. My brother would appreciate you seeing them.”

Barney Barton may had been one of the many that tried to kill Clint, but the older Barton had left some bit of good in the world. His double life led to two kids and a wife that now lived on Clint’s farm back in Iowa. Those same kids that called Nat and Galatea _aunt_ , those same kids that Clint loved like they were his own. Damn, Clint knew how to still leave with a jab at Galatea.

She only offers a distant smile, “I might.”

Nat barrels into the detective, wrapping her arms tightly and clings to Galatea for only a few seconds, “See you around.”

Galatea picked up on the unspoken words. Call, text, write a goddamn letter to let them know about anything or nothing— let them know that she is still alive and kicking and not dead in a ditch somewhere. She hugs Clint next, hears his favorite nickname for her in his whispered parting words and she waves him away from her. They disappear past Frank, who took to opening his own mailbox, and they disappear into the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. They left as nothing more than inky shadows and untold whispers into the night.

Galatea turns her acquired letters over with a disinterested hum. She notices Frank’s curious gaze and Jack’s excited huffing. The two of them enter the elevator to go up to their floor and remain in relative silence until they reach their respective apartment doors.

“Come and eat dinner with Marion and me. She’d appreciate more people trying out her mother’s recipe,” Galatea unlocks her door, not turning to see if he even heard or acknowledged her.

His dulcet tones have her smile inadvertently, “You sure about that, ma’am?”

Galatea nods, flourishing her hand for him to enter first, “Jack can come too, _Pete_.”

Frank tilts his head, trying to read her and obviously failing at that. Both of them knew that even with the distance he had placed between them, he could not resist her. She would respect him for either refusing or accepting— the neighbor with shifting eyes, the detective with secrets and lethality as her middle name, the soldier with a bloody and glorious past. He had been doomed to fail from the very beginning.

And so, he enters her apartment.

He helps set up the dining table, where he had once been stitched and pieced back together one night, sits in a chair with the dog happily barking by his side. He sits down when everything is set down onto the table by the pair of women and he eats. Marion flutters about rather eagerly, beaming and giggling as she helps put out the serving for the three of them. She even sets out a small bowl of the pot roast for Jack.

Galatea’s shadowed look lightens, her laugh exquisite to both Marion and Frank’s ears.

“Yeah? Well, we can always just—”

Frank looks over these two women, one tall and slender and so, so fragile while the other has steel for the entirety of her body and a calm but vigilant shifting in her eyes. They are serving more food and passing it over to him as they continue on in their animated conversation. The little bird, the lithe redhead that has physical remnants of her past abuse shines brightly as she speaks of getting her job back as an editor for a literature agency.

He continues to watch the other more closely.

He observes the scrunch of her nose, follows the careful arching of her brow, and watches the curving of her cupid’s bow— he looks away from her when she turns her head. She always caught him looking at her, somehow always knew when his eyes would betray him in following after her. How rude, how inappropriate, he should be keeping the distance, abiding to the forced rules he firmly placed down— and yet, she never reprimands him, never teases or calls him out for his actions.

She only smiles at him. He doesn’t stop himself from smiling back at her.


	9. Warrior

**She can’t stay, can’t remain here to wither to nothing, no matter how tempted she is beckoned for by the ghosts of the past. She had things to do, truths to let out for the world to know and people to find and inflict her revenge upon. For she holds no mercy to those she deems as her enemies.**

**She can play this game of cat and mouse. She can make her new hunt long-term. For she has nothing else to do with the longevity that burns through her veins like holy fire. For she has known this game before, she has spent much time perfecting her hunt for this very game.**

**And so, she awakens.**

**She awakens to a hovercraft created by an organization that has long fallen from favor. The same organization that had been blamed for many things, many secrets had been revealed and many world-ending plans rooted out due to corruption with the organization’s own ranks. The fallen country had been evacuated, what people could be saved by those called heroes and the victors against the machine that planned the fall of the foreign country, had found their way to the hovercrafts that now drift away from the remnants.**

**Quicksilver, silvern hair of a young man who also opens his eyes. He has the eyes of the sky, lit with a twin silver of his hair. He still lives, despite his previous, fatal wounds meant for his death. She breathes a sigh of relief, after all, she had done what she did so he would live past these wounds. She had committed something that she should surely have been punished for, for cheating death of its favored prize.**

**Quicksilver, silvern eyes of a close companion, a friend of her endless past, greets her. Those eyes are of who had done the extraordinary healing, welcoming her back to the world of the living. A mutated gene that gave her a godly power, the doctor smiles down at her with a shaky, resolved expression.**

**She is alive, that is all that matters.**

**The falling country is nothing but rubble, thanks to the combined efforts of a god and a man of iron. The people of the country had been evacuated rather successfully. The horrors of the enemy should be taken care of now by an entity that she herself does not quite grasp and she has seen many things in her lifetimes of lifetimes. The mission is completed.**

**She needed to go back, now that everything said had been done. The truth needed to be let out. Her hunt is on the horizon, her hunt is to begin when she returns to the city that holds one of her many dead and one of her many secrets.**

… … … … … …………….

Something is around her neck. It jingled, familiar and yet seemed so out of place around her neck. The silver is bright against the dusky tones of her skin. And Frank wondered if the print is in her native tongue or the same print as his own dog tags.

He frowned. He abruptly remembered that Betty had said something, regarding her son.

The detective, once a soldier— once a _captain_ in some mix of special forces and black ops group— called in favors for the body of a single person. The soldier had reappeared on the battlefield in search of a man that she had, without a doubt, known personally. She had the fortitude to bring him back to Betty, when no one else could or would. Her son was dead, but Galatea _cared_ , cared so much for Betty and Elli. She had to bring him back to the waitress with a broken heart, had to bring him back _home_ — for an actual person to be buried in that lonesome coffin for a funeral that would be conducted within the month of Betty receiving the news of her dead son.

That was the kind of person the detective is.

Betty had said it, she had said that Galatea made it personal. Betty had said the _soldier_ in the detective would not stop until she accomplished the task.

Galatea had retired in 2003, due to the disbandment of the Hel’s Guard— something about the government wishing to bury their secrets and release the soldiers from such burdensome services… but Betty’s son, he had died only four years ago, almost five. That is a good eight years in between her retirement and Betty’s son having been killed in action. Frank grunted in amusement, rubbing his hands over his face as he calculated the time.

The cutting board makes a shearing, airy noise at the precise chopping of vegetables under Galatea’s knife. He shifted his gaze back to her, taking in her comfortable attire and how her thick hair is flat for once. There are no waves or curls to be seen, a short fall of inky black have fallen over her eyes and face. She did not care to move it as her cutting continued on and she sensed his focus now directly upon her, if the small curl of her mouth indicated anything.

They remain in the silence for only a few more moments.

“You’re staring. Didna’ your mother tell you that’s considered rude, Castle?”

She shuffled the cut vegetables into the pot of stir fry, still not moving her hair or looking back at him. She settled the knife back onto the cutting board as she looked to the cook book but also latching onto the meat package on the counter.

“Betty’s son.”

She tensed, not flipping the page for the next steps of instruction and hand hovering over the meat. The detective contemplates on how to approach this subject, it had been a sore one to talk about— considering how she had done things the way she did back then. It is a heartbreaking subject because she vividly remembers Betty crying and falling into Galatea’s arms when the detective had offered a solemn, supportive role.

“She told you about him?”

Frank is a large presence in her shared space. He takes up a position on her couch but still he does not seem to realize that in this apartment, he easily grabs attention. He is far too imposing to be able to fall into the shadows like she preferred to. His broad shoulders and chest are in a tight shirt, the muscles in movement are a sight to behold.

“Only what you did for her and him…”

He shifted to stare fully at her. She leans onto the countertop, umber eyes honed on him now. The shift in her eyes is but a spark, no storms charging or waves building within them, her attention is simply now on him. He feels a thrill of being under her scrutiny once more.

“What about Elli?”

Frank finds it in himself to be as still as possible under her steady gaze, the lethality a silent companion just underneath the smoke of her eyes. The dimmed lights in the kitchen gives her a shadowed halo, he finds her beautiful and he needs to stop watching her, needs to stop looking and just maybe stop the irregular beat on his heart in his chest. His ribcage is protesting against his treacherous heart. He feels like she can probably hear him from where she stands.

“How’d you find him?”

Her gaze grew distant, staring into him and then _through_ him. She reminisced on the memory and then returned to stare at him once more. She shifted on her feet, not a common thing— she only did it when in a state of discomfort or reluctance. She made a low, indistinguishable noise— small and rather hesitant.

“I made a call. That’s all to it.”

She lays her hand back down to the countertop; her dove hands slowly curl in on themselves. The vulnerable, soft distance that Frank had weakly placed seems almost nonexistent now. This, this once awkward connection and gradual gravitation towards one another, is something that Frank is painfully aware of now. Galatea seems to understand that as well.

“How’d he die?”

She glared at him— he had hit a nerve, obviously.

“Frank, what are you getting at with this?”

And for once, she is the one that withdraws away. Not him. It is an interesting shift on the scale of power between them.

“’m curious, is all.”

He is looking for the wrathful, writhing being shifting just behind those umber eyes. He is looking to see if it made it personal, a well-hidden part of herself that almost seemed separate from her but still a part of her in an undeniable way. He waited for her to answer, taking in the sight of her standing in the kitchen with her dove hands clenching tight and yet appeared so serene in the lightning.

She sighed but fury flashed, “From what I gathered from his old squad; he protected a kid from an IED. Happy?”

He listened on the noise of the countertop groaning under her strength.

Definitely personal.

He watched as she rips open the packaging and begins cutting the meat, dicing and slicing with precision and practiced skill. The dim lighting creates shadows on the sharp lines and curved angles of her face. The lighting makes her more shadow and secrets and truths than one of flesh and bone. She is exquisite with the way the air ripples when she is in movement.

And he damns himself for watching her longer than he should.

… … … … … …………….

Marion does not come back from her small grocery run because she insisted to go alone. She insisted that they needed cake for their month-long anniversary of knowing each other. And for Galatea because she would be returning to active duty in the precinct.

At first, Frank and Galatea do not think much on it.

It is when Galatea receives a call from Marion’s number that both Frank and Galatea have never experienced such a world-ending panic. Galatea picks up the phone, a dark shift in her umber eyes when she faces Frank and puts the phone to her ear. She opens a door to her closet when she presses the answer button.

“Marion?”

Frank never thought he would see Galatea be frozen into a single spot. He noticed that she is always in movement, always pacing a length or prowling within the space of her apartment whenever he would be invited by Marion. She only remained rooted when she would be doing a task or when she is sleeping. She still sleeps like a soldier in a trench, squished between the bodies of others and remaining as motionless as possible when finding the time to rest.

The hinges to her bedroom still squeak ominously in the night, shrill and rude to those who are light sleepers. Light sleepers like Frank can hear it in the dead of night from his own apartment— Galatea had restless moments as well, always ghosting around in her own apartment like it is some foreign setting and not her own home. Frank knew it all too well, as he would do it himself. Jack would accompany him and Frank would think that Shadow and Hunter would be Galatea’s company in the dark.

Her dusky skin, that gift of being sun-kissed by her people’s land, turned ashen. Those grays dominate the browns only to turn black, black, black as her pupils widen. And her dove hands are probably going to break her phone into pieces with the amount of strength that causes the plastic casing to slowly give in, in her hand.

Frank never thought he would see the sight of a fear-stricken Galatea.

And he absolutely hated it because his heart is a rebel and his hands are shaking with so much rage.

A hollow laugh leaves Galatea, shocking Frank, with the clenching of her other hand. She is drawing blood from her palm with her nails. For a second, he must have seen a shadow of something because her nails looked real sharp in one second and looked normal in another. But still, she drew blood and there are now small droplets of the crimson on the floor of her apartment.

“Give me the address and we can settle this without Marion in the middle.”

He always thought he must have not been sleeping enough the night before, he always caught those strange half seconds of seeing something from Galatea.

That time when she had beaten Marion’s husband, before she had grappled with him, her palms had been on top of the broken plates and shattered glass. He did not see the cuts on her palms after he had patched the back of her head up.

One time she had been caught unaware by Marion, slamming her knuckles harshly against the wall when she had jumped away from Marion and leaving a streak of red on the white of the walls. But when Frank had grabbed her hand to look for the peeled skin and dripping blood from her knuckles, there was nothing there. He figured that the streak had always been there instead, after all; a painting picked by Marion had been right there. He hated that painting afterwards.

Frank is on his feet before he knows it as Galatea’s phone leaves her ear. She is a whirlwind now, pushing aside things in her closet. A backpack, sleek and only black is all he can see that she grabs in the depths of the closet. She is practically ripping it open to look for something.

“Marion has been kidnapped. They… they said twenty-four hours. A goddamn sick game of hide and seek. Unless, we find what her reckless husband stole from them.”

Frank is rearing up now, he’s never seen this Galatea before. That burning righteousness is a savage thing that has her bearing her teeth and snarling. The shift in her eyes close, so tantalizing close, to the barrier of her eyes.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

… … … … … …………….

There is always this anticipation, this overload of the senses when a soldier goes to war.

And yet, as Frank watches Galatea grab nothing more than her leather jacket and leave through her door. Nothing is there in her. The fatalistic gleam in her umber eyes, the deadliness that coiled tighter and tighter and just simply faded into the background.

They had threatened to kill Marion— sweet, delicate Marion— if they brought weapons.

They think they are in the higher position, that they hold the advantage over both Frank and Galatea. And they are right. So goddamn right. And that is why the anticipation, the thrill of being on a battlefield, the light feeling of the calm before the storm, is pumping through Frank like never before.

The warehouse setting is so cliché, in Frank’s mind.

To Galatea, it is probably something of a playground— she could work with this. She could do a lot of things with whatever is in that warehouse of three whole floors inside. Or she could play the game just like they want her to, a game of hide and seek, a game of chasing those she finds in the dark. She could do this, she has been running more and teaching Marion gave her the excuse to train herself back to shape.

She hoped that Marion could find her conviction but dreaded the thought of Marion actually finding her conviction.

Galatea is in a race of time. She could not hold back for a single second because everything depended on Marion’s _life_. And Galatea would be damned if she ever let Marion, of all people in her life, to be hurt. Marion had been a cool breeze in a summer’s day, she had been such a delight and given Galatea respite. Marion had been doing some good for Frank too, unknowing of Frank’s past. Marion had been a good way to provide a buffer and added distance between Galatea and Frank.

Galatea noticed, always had an eye for the smallest of changes. She had noticed the lingering looks, the rumbling laughter that vibrates from his chest and the way he relaxed more and more in her presence. But she also noticed the panic, as though he was betraying the family he once had, betraying the wife he loved so dearly. She noticed the struggle in him.

And within herself.

But right now, is not the time to think of such things— of how her heart did beat irregularly and how her smiles multiplied since the beginning. Right now, is action, right now is Marion’s survival depending on the soldiers that she unknowingly connected to.

Galatea enters the warehouse on the first floor’s front door.

Frank would be on the roof, after he goes for the people on the stairs on the side of the warehouse.

Galatea follows the painted arrows and signs, the area she comes upon is only filled with men who know nothing of her. They made the mistake of thinking that they caught her. They made the mistake of not bringing Marion like they promise. They should have used Marion as a shield from Galatea. But they did not. And this would cost them.

“Where is the money, where’s the package?” The supposed leader steps up, a pistol in hand.

Why the hell is he waving it around like that? He could easily shoot himself in the foot as well as miss shooting her. _Amateurs_. Or rather, assailants who truly thinks she is nothing more than someone who would be willing to do anything to get Marion back. Let them think whatever they want. In the end, Galatea would find Marion. She would always find Marion.

She grunts when one of them kicks her in the stomach, allows herself to fall to the ground and hold onto her stomach at the actual pain. But pain is good, pain makes her feel alive, pain grounds her rather than take away from her senses. Her sight sharpens and her hearing increases.

They never knew that they invited something else than just a detective…

“Guns are so impersonal…” her voice carries itself, smooth and warning of danger,” I prefer teeth and _claws_.”

… … … … … …………….

Frank followed after them— the bastards scrambling for the exit. He took a flight down after them. Some were lagging behind but one of the men had reached the exit door while most were halfway there. Frank grunted in annoyance at the thought of chasing them outside on the streets just to kill those assholes.

But when the door to the second floor stairwell screeched as it got wrenched open, something else made itself known. A roar— thunderous, murderous— it is a battle cry, a call to arms, booming and deafening. It echoes inside Frank and his very bones vibrate in remembrance. There is _snarling_ on the other side of the door. The man is frozen in fear as he drops his weapon.

And before the man could retreat, a large body crashed right into him. He is screaming— shrieking his dying cries as the large body is ripping into him. He keeps screaming underneath the full weight of the sleek, dark furred body. The silence swallows the dead man’s cries after a sudden wrench reveals the bloodied, broken neck of the man.

“Holy fuck…”

One of the men cursed in disbelief and tried to turn back for the indoor stairs, only to stop midstep as he registers who is behind them. Frank had already stopped just before he could reach any of them in less than ten paces. He chuckles lowly as the fear registers fully in the gang members, his hands still clutching his weapon and teeth bared at them in a display of pure aggression. Frank had grabbed one of the weapons from the single man who had covered the roof.

_Amateurs_.

Because now, _now_ , on the other side of the room, there is a goddamn panther, lean and slick raven black fur, standing on all four paws over a dead gang member. And it looks ravenous for more dead gang members, a rumbling radiating from the panther’s chest— it could sense the fear and the panther _relished_ in it.

A growl bounces off the walls, the tumbling and rolling rumbling in its chest prominent. The panther’s tail swishes from one side to the other, haunches begin to lower as if to ready itself to pounce on another gang member. Frank catches the all-seeing eyes in the single light that stretches within the space of the second floor of the warehouse.

When the first of the men brought up his machine gun, the _Wildcat_ of the Avengers, moved first. The panther reared from its’ haunches and launched itself at the huddled group of men. A roar sounds off from its’ mighty jaws— the cry a clash of thunder and call for destructive waves. A primal, savage glee warms Frank as he settles himself to begin his own attacks as well.

Frank remembered how the Wildcat had been perceived by the public. Because he remembered well how Lisa had shown him a video that the Avengers had announced the Wildcat to be an official Avenger. But the Wildcat refused ever being on screen, they left the media to Tony Stark and Captain America.

The Wildcat had been part of the newly initiated Avengers during the _Incident_. And Lisa had been excited on the fact that they had been revealed to be a female. A female shapeshifter who could take on the form of every deadly, claw-wielding wild cats known to man.

Lisa had said that the Wildcat preferred the panther due to some interview where Tony Stark had answered questions regarding the shapeshifting superhero.

The panther slashed a man in the thigh with claws, drawing first blood and reared to clamp those terrifyingly thick fangs into the neck of another— the panther’s body sailed in the air. The screams of her intended target only confirmed the panther’s attack. When both the panther and her victim go down to the ground, the man under the powerfully feline body, the panther brutally snaps his neck after sinking its fangs into him.

Frank moved after, shooting down two others at the same time. The panther moved to tear through another, its’ slick, furred body thundered towards another victim with those wicked claws.

Any shots fired at the panther were futile, as they were missing it by a long shot in their fear and desperation. But it is also because Frank would keep them occupied with his own killing shots.

They did not stop until all the gang members dead.

Frank Castle is now facing a bloodied panther that kept to remaining still in one spot. Its eyes are not the usual emerald greens. They are _gray_ and speckled with brown shades. Just looking into them throws Frank off with the familiarity, with recognizing exactly who is now stationary in a single spot. Those umber eyes are observing him, watching him flit back and forth between the bodies of dead men for the information that is hopefully on them.

When he turns back to the panther, scratching at his head after he holsters his newly acquired pistol. They stare at one another and just staring at those eyes jars him with the harsh reality of things.

“You, ah… you gonna stay like that? At least, I hope you’re who I think you are?”

Hell, he felt crazy. He felt damned fucking insane at the thought of speaking to a goddamn _panther_. But there is the shift, that intelligence and that brilliance and that burning righteousness that he became familiar with— he knew only one person with _lethality_ as their middle name. And right now, she is a panther. A fucking panther.

How the hell does something like this even happen?

A slight tilt of the panther’s head is the only answer he gets. He swears he could see amusement in those eyes. The same as all the times they shared a conversation in the hallway between their apartments, the same as when she would catch him shamefully watching and following her with his eyes. The same when she would smile at him with her full attention on him.

“Jesus Christ, alright. Just… just stop staring at me, will ya?”

A small huff of breath escapes from the panther and ends in a purr, that must have been her way of laughing at him. There is a slight curve at the corners of the panther’s jaws— is that considered a smile? He could not tell anymore. Goddamn, he felt real crazy now.

But she complied, moving back to the exit door instead of continuing her staring. The panther’s claws scritch-scratched, like Jack’s but the noise is sharper as her claws were naturally sharpened to dangerous points.

He did not hear the sounds of bones reshaping, but he caught the last seconds of the panther reforming back to the woman he knew. He watched as Galatea Winters transformed back. He watched as the tail disappeared from her backside, the whiskers fading from her skin and the leonine glint disappears from those gray-brown eyes. Her bloody body, covered from head to toe, is covered in a strange, dark material that covered a good expanse of the skin of her body in a two-piece spandex like underwear. The article of clothing must have been designed to remain undamaged by her _shapeshifting_.

There are words slipping from her bloodied lips, the red smeared as though she had been wearing lipstick and kissed somebody to leave her mark. She is muttering, incomprehensible and mostly in another language. It did not sound like the tongue of her country, but Frank never got familiar with hearing it as she rarely spoke it in front of him.

She sometimes spoke them when she just awakens from a deep sleep or a good _cat_ nap on the couch. Because she trusted him enough to feel safe enough to get a nap in during the day.

He could not tell if any of the blood is her own, she moved fluidly as she picked up a bag from behind the exit door entrance and approached him carefully with the bag on hand. It is the same sleek, black bag from her closet. Those grays are lightly flickering around him, as if to pick up on any sudden reactions from him. When she seems satisfied, she stops and begins to take out clothes. Her leather jacket along with her clothes and her heeled boots— she had come prepared, she knew she would end up shapeshifting, she knew the dangers of being revealed of her true nature.

Frank finishes his salvaging, keeping himself from watching as she yanks on the jeans and the boots before slipping into a black t-shirt and the leather jacket. The red on her lips, her cheeks and her neck are gruesome. The iron tang is a strong scent that waifs in the air. He grimaces as he watches her grab a towel and rubs at her skin roughly.

She notices him no longer moving amongst the bodies, still rubbing the blood from her skin and her umber orbs takes him in warily. She exuded exhaustion. She seemed so sad, with the downwards curve of her full lips and her weary eyes.

“Finished already?”

… … … … … …………….

Betty looked rather amused with the disheveled appearance of both Frank and Galatea. But, as usual, she spoke nothing of it. Or because she knew that bringing attention of the red that is still underneath Galatea’s fingernails or the fresh bruises on Frank’s face is not exactly something new to Betty.

The cappuccino and black coffee greeting the two is a refreshing sight after they finished ordering their usual. The silence stretches between the two of them, both looking to one another as they wait patiently for the food and the refills. They both downed two cups of their drinks in their exhaustion and the unspent energy still fizzing and sparking between them.

Frank could only stare at Galatea as she devoured the two plates’ worth of French toast, eggs, bacons and cooked spinach. She lifted an eyebrow after catching his staring, she smiled rather solemnly. Her head tilts, as if to nod her consent. Galatea already knew what is to come.

He decided then to open the dam of questions.

“You’re a shapeshifter? An actual, honest-to-God, shapeshifter?”

She nods wordlessly.

“You’re also the _Wildcat_ , from those Avengers. A shapeshifting Avenger…”

She sipped from her mug briefly, “Retired.”

It seemed _retired_ is her most used vocabulary.

He sat back in the booth, heaving a sigh and running his fingers over his scalp, “What the hell…”

She continued her eating, the mug fanning her face with steam in a caressing sigh. Her umber eyes keep themselves locked onto Frank, not worried about the empty diner or Betty who conversed with Gerard about supplying from the back. There is no one else to worry about when she lets slip of possibly the most dangerous of all her secrets and truths.

His mouth curled, he leans forward and places his arms onto the table before licking at his lips, “You’re… shifting?”

Galatea sniffed, her mug still lifted to her lips as she heard Frank’s curiosity in his half question. She took a measured, finishing sip and switched her plates for the other French toast order yet to be in her stomach.

With his asbestos mouth, he inhaled his black coffee without flinching and Galatea’s lips twitch as if she took the burn herself. He swiped at his bottom lip with his index finger, noticing her steady gaze, her gently quirked eyebrow. He stared back at her, which seemed to amuse her into smiling. The woman, both shapeshifter and the detective, set her mug down.

“Well? What about it? Gonna hav’ta be specific, Castle?”

He grunted in mock annoyance, smiling as well.

She got him with that.

“Tell me about it, you know it best.”

Even though others would have heard this as a demand in such a deep, rough voice, Galatea knew this as his way of offering her the options of whatever she chose to tell him. To tell him of her abilities and what she felt he should know, regarding her _skillset_.

She nodded at Betty appreciative as the elder woman handed a new cup of her mocha cappuccino. Frank, with a refill, thanked her with a softer tone of _thank you_ , _ma_ ’ _am_.

“Well,” Galatea hummed before taking another sip, “I can change into either human or animal forms. The Avengers only ever witnessed _Wildcat_. So, I assumed only forms of wild felines in the world. Extinct or otherwise… kind of as a big _fuck you_ to Fury. Conniving ass, but he’s like that with everyone.”

She caught his assessment, the thought process of ever seeing her as a different _person_ , “It takes more concentration, with human faces— I haven’t shifted into someone else even after my Avenger mantle started.”

He frowned even more, “Does it… is it painful?”

She sipped once more, before nodding and continuing on.

“Used to hurt. My bones, muscles and tissue were being changed within seconds to something else. Now, it is similar to popping or cracking your knuckles. Only hurts when I try a new _form_ — not much I haven’t turned into…”

_Yet_. The look they share said what she did not add to her explanation.

Galatea leaned on her open palm with her cheek, gazing out the window and observes as the downpour slides on the glass. Somewhere, in the distance, thunder is a clashing wave in the sky. Frank downs his cup once more and mutters as the shapeshifter’s eyes turn distant and glassy. He found himself disliking how far away she is with her presence, untouched and unknown to others. Who really knew her for who she is?

“It’s hard, sometimes, to remember my real face. If I stay in another form for too long. Luckily, someone painted me back hen so I could reclaim my face.”

Shit. She closed her eyes, too much, she had said too much.

But as she reopened her eyes, Frank only seemed contemplative on something else. She remains quiet, umber eyes void of anything Frank could read. That withdraw from the world made her untouchable as ever.

“I’m still going to look for her tonight.”

He frowns at her whispered vow, “I won’t stop you from doing so. But I think Marion would want you to rest before trying to set the whole city on fire.”

She goes quiet once more, a stretch of silence ensues before she relent with a single tip of her chin.


	10. Merciless

**The woman of short stature breathed in heavily, ignoring the pain in her abdomen and her hip, but walked back into the park to find the messy scene that occurred just a short couple of hours ago.**

**The detective limped slightly, disguising it as swaggering gait. When another officer had the pleasure of her badge being shoved in their face, they did not disturb her as she ventured onward to the bloody scene before her. There are numbered signs that are scattered over the place, blood spots and splatters left behind, and a few body bags were being rolled in.**

**Only fifteen people had been transported to the hospital for gunshot wounds, so far none had died from their injuries. Except there were those who had been shot dead, five bodies. _Five_ people, not six. The gang member that was dead is nowhere to be found. His body must have been taken before it could be found.**

**_Cover up_.**

**She narrowed her eyes upon the John Doe, a second male body, and a family of three being put into the body bags. She barely glanced at the John Doe. She gazed at the second one, a golden man, and looked down upon his face. He had laugh lines but the pain that had been painted onto his face had twisted those laugh lines.**

**She stared and stared…**

**An inspector snapped a photograph with a flash of her camera, leading the detective out of her reverie, “Poor man… someone really tried to save him, but all those bullets he wouldn’t have even survived the trip to hospital…”**

**I know. I _know_. She wants to roar it out, she wants to scratch the itch in her skin, and she wants to do nothing more than follow those centuries of natural instincts of razing this damned city to the ground. But she needed justice to be served first, she needed to find the truth and she needed to get the truth revealed for the rest of the world.**

**The detective clenched her teeth— ignoring the pain in her cheek as she too observed the bloody prints left on his ashen, waxy skin. She had tried so hard, tried and failed and fallen into despair. Her bones ached, her soul wept, and no one could see what lays underneath her skin. He used to; he knew her. And he is dead, like so many from her past.**

**She begins moving on, the detective looked at the family of three as to not miss any more details. Her other instincts, those of lingering wistfulness and budding hope, kept telling her to wait, to wait for another sign and she is gifted for the wait. Her ears pricked at the whispers.**

**The _father_ had been sent to the hospital— _alive_.**

**She stopped in her walking as she listened on.**

**A _do no resuscitate_ …**

**She clenched her hands into her fists. Someone wanted him dead… the detective championed on, limping even more to her motorcycle and swiftly drove to the hospital.**

… … … … … …………….

Frank hands her another pistol, arm stretched out as he remains leaning against his truck. He had taken some extras before they had left the warehouse to go to the diner— that being said, his trunk had begun a growing collection after taking the warehouse by storm. The scum they left behind to rot had weapons in crates— weapon dealers and smugglers.

It made Frank think, question about what exactly Marion’s husband had stolen and hidden away. But he supposed he would never find the truth— the husband never got mentioned on the news channels. He had been discovered in the trash disposal; some journalist wrote a story about the whole thing, broken ankle and twisted neck, but it never took to the public as it should have.

Hell’s Kitchen had always been like that— the city did not give a shit about one dead person.

But a warehouse of dead mercenaries? That would catch the city’s attention.

Galatea merely glances at the weapon in his large hand for a moment, a pause in the air follows her as a lingering ghost. When she moves to take it, she is nodding her head in appreciation and carefully holding it as she inspects the clip.

Her movements with unloading and reloading, checking the chamber, and clicking the safety back on is all trained instinct that had been drilled into her as it had been with Frank. She leans against the truck with loose limbs and nothing but calculated motions as she looks down to the piece of paper in her hand.

Frank notices that she is careful to not allow their hands to graze one another, he notices that the red is still underneath her fingernails. And he could not tell if that small gesture meant to respect the distance he had put up in between them or if she is the one who needed the distance now.

Or maybe it had something to do with her senses. She had explained that she gained additional attributions— her sense of smell, her vigilant hearing, her sharp sight. Could it also affect her sensitivity with touch?

And if so, how much? How well could her senses be; compared to the average human, compared to him?

Could Galatea hear his pulse hotly racing through his body or his traitorous heart beating in his chest? Could she see the individual bruises on his skin and predict what his scars came from? Could she smell his excitement or his fear?

Galatea turns her head towards him, umber eyes all gray and wary, “You are thinking real hard about something.”

Frank snorts, jokingly asking with a bit of a bite, “You a mind reader too?”

Galatea flinches, like she had been slapped by someone, but the shock in her eyes fade as she turns away from him, back down to the paper with the written address. That same piece of paper that Frank had taken off a gang member’s body after Galatea had revealed her hidden skillset. An address that would lead them just a step closer to Marion.

Frank bites the inside of his cheek.

Maybe he had some feelings regarding Galatea’s lifelong secret, not all good when it came to those who have superpowers or mutated genes. He had seen the news when he had been on a deployment, the soldier in him thought it was plain stupid for people to have capes or secret identities or all that other bullshit. The husband in him though, he worried about his family being near that kind of stuff when he was not home to be there with them.

But he never meant his words to be as an insult, he _respected_ Galatea. She had the patience of a goddamn saint, willing wait and careful to placate in a situation that demanded it. But she had the wrath of the devil, she is merciless when she decides to bring the hammer down.

If Lisa thought that the _Wildcat_ was a cool superhero, he could get over the fact that his neighbor, the detective that became something more than just a friend to him, could take on different forms. He just needed to learn how to keep his feelings on lockdown— especially when those feelings all did not just stem solely on Galatea’s secret.

“Sorry, I, I didn’t mean it like that,” he scratches at his head, bruised face heating up.

Galatea folds the slip of paper in half and shoves it into her leather jacket, she takes a steadying breath, “You get this look on your face and you fidget a lot more than you realize. We all do it, Frank.”

The grays in her eyes are soft with the city lights across the river, tender with none of the lethality she hides behind the windows to her soul— that look she aims at him always made his heart beat a little faster. That look he knows far too well by now and it has been only a month since they met each other in the hallway connecting their apartments and connecting their lives to one another.

Did she mean what she said about him thinking hard or that even she had developed feelings for him? Because right now, he could not take this— the gravitation and the attraction needed to stop. But with every second of resisting, he found it harder to stay away and yet, just as difficult to deny. The growing need to run away as far as he could but also the need to stay right by her side dawns on him with a vicious cycle that never ends.

And he obviously got that _look_ on his face again because he picks up on Galatea shaking slightly.

She is laughing now, low and smooth, “And who said that Marines were jarheads? They have not met you, Frank Castle.”

Frank smiles involuntarily, knowing now that the detective is just poking at him to get him to relax, “You are a real piece of work, you know that, Galatea Winters? My friend, Curt, I think he would like you.”

She cocks an eyebrow up high, amusement glittering in all that gray, “Yeah? Well, he sounds nice. Especially, if he learned how to deal with you, I’ll have to ask for some advice.”

Frank watches as the city lights shines in her pitch-black hair, he knew how soft it is now— they had taken plenty of naps on her couch together, “You are a fucking trip, _ma_ ’ _am_.”

They would take a nap, after he dragged himself back to his apartment to lick his wounds from his nightly activities and she would haul him into her own apartment to patch him up. When she had a restless night before the next day started, he found it easy to cajole her into taking one in between making food and enduring the endless energy that Marion radiates.

Frank knew how to detangle windswept knots in Galatea’s hair— Lisa used to have what he called monster curls in her youth, something that Maria would claim that it came from his side of the family and _practice makes perfect_. He knew how the detective loved almond shampoo and hated the fruity ones that Marion used— now, he somewhat understood why she hated the artificial scents. He took a guilty pleasure in knowing that she always sighs in contentment, because he knew how to run his fingers through her hair but only when he was absolutely sure she slept deeply.

Lockdown. He needed to keep this under lockdown.

“I really hate being called that; you know.”

The stars are bright overhead but distant and seem to specifically illuminate directly into her eyes, the smile etched on her face just as enchanting as the last. The wind is singing a song that he could try to put into words for her. And he needed to stop looking at her like this too.

“I’m serious about my mother coming back from the grave just to box me in the ears.”

Galatea chuckles before they share their comfortable silence, looking out over the river and finding a newfound peace. They both needed the sense of clarity that is needed before they return to their search for Marion. They both needed to keep their emotions on lockdown.

Galatea is looking up now, up to the sky. The stars seem to shine a bit brighter, as if they know that they have a stargazer in their midst. And they revel in her presence, just as much as he does.

“You like the stars or something?”

A stupid question, really. But the thing is, with this silence and the closeness without any buffers between them, Frank cannot help himself. Frank notices the small glance from her. She turns her head and looks to the sky once more— her far away gaze, her distance from him and the rest of the world— her smile is a sorrowful thing of her secrets and untold truths.

“I have loved them since I came to existence. I loved them _fiercely_. I loved them far too _fondly_ …” She pauses, to look to him, “I was never afraid of the night, of the dark sky and the absence of light.”

Her soft truth— one she has not spoken of in years— it seems it feels like centuries— it leaves her in an incredulous tone. It becomes a freedom, to be able to speak of it now in so long, and he hears it.

He hears her fears, the fear of being seen as a monster, the fear of people thinking her as such and nothing about who she is. No one would know that she takes pleasure in eating French toast like a royal feast, not the flesh of others or the marrow from bones. No one would know that she had the heart of a lioness always looking over her cubs, not the hunger and predatory stillness of a huntress.

No one would know that she loves like everybody else.

Frank looks up and away, the awkwardness of their shared comfort and silence brings him to a startling realization. But even if he had seen all those sides of her, he still knew nothing of her— she had so many secrets. He wonders if he decides to stay after all this, would he learn more of her?

Galatea turns over the pistol, a weapon that is not marked with numbers that could trace her back to a precinct and her fake life. But Frank had a feeling that even if someone were to find out of her true identity, she could easily pick up her life, shape it into something different, and move on to someplace else in the world.

He could not— should not— think about it. The thought of her leaving. The thought of him never seeing her again. But also, the thought of thinking that maybe, just maybe, when she does leave Hell’s Kitchen; that he could follow after her and she would allow him to be by her side.

“You good?” He asks as he takes out another pistol for himself.

Galatea laughs, low and dangerous and that lethality rearing back up in her eyes that makes him shiver, “I am with you.”

He desperately tries to ignore the tenderness of her eyes and the rise of his beating heart.

Fortunately, it only took a couple of hours to cool the shapeshifter down and bring back the detective. It is just _unfortunate_ for those who decided to go against Galatea and Frank. And the two of them together were going to get Marion back.

… … … … … …………….

They go to the docks as the address on the slip of paper had led them there. There are shipping containers, some stacked upon each other in endless rows and lines, others by themselves and there are those towering metal cranes along the riverside. Some ships floating atop the water.

The wind is biting and near feral, as though the world is encouraging the hunters that prowl upon the shipping grounds. The pair melt into the shadows. No one is aware of their presence closing in on their soon to be prey.

Frank spotted some more of the people, holding a hand out to halt Galatea just a step behind him. He hears the soft brush of her leather jacket, a small breath as she inhales as she too begins her sweep for more of them. Frank could hear the soft crunch of gravel underneath a man’s feet, someone complaining about wanting sleep and another complaining about the weather and the wind.

The weapon dealing scum from the warehouse had more people on this operation it seemed. And they are either none the wiser about it going up in flames sooner than later. Damn, Marion’s very dead husband is a real piece of shit.

Galatea counts only three handfuls, three dozen of them, and spread out far too thinly. No one follows the system of two’s anymore, it seems. She clucks her tongue in mock pity.

_Amateurs_.

Galatea signals for the right. Frank nods and she smiles at him, her own sign of _good luck_ and _be careful_. When he grunts in amusement, she playfully winks right at him. He waves his hand to _go away_ , _now_. She laughs low before her smile fades and she simply disappears right into the darkness of the night. And the hunt is on.

In consideration of her shifting, she could easily take all of them. But with Frank, there are other ways to deliberate upon. Classic ambush, typical hit and run— take downs, knock outs. Galatea is going to do it right; she would follow Frank’s way to fight. She ignored the instincts to scratch the itch underneath her skin, the tempting and luring scraping of claws brushing along her fingernails.

But there is one thing that she cannot ignore— scent. Marion’s fruity shampoo would be the little bird’s lifesaver.

Galatea slips behind the rows of shipping containers, running along the lengths all the way to the last of the men where they stopped in their spread out positions. She slips around a corner and waits. The crunching steps of the man approaches her hidden position. She waits some more.

A man sighs, begins to mutter and complain about the biting cold and the chilly wind. No one answers him as he is too far away to be heard. The small crunch alerts Galatea to take a peek and she smiles viciously. His back is turned to her.

She slowly reaches out, like a cooing lover that moves to cover his eyes.

When her hands reach past his ears, entering his peripheral vision, he gasps. But nobody hears as the crack of his neck is muffled. Nobody hears as she reels back around the corner whilst dragging his limp body into the shadows. She dumps the body, out of sight and behind the shipping container row. She crouches checking for a radio and more clips of ammo.

The detective hums as she pockets the clips and extra pistol. No radio, too bad for them.

A shot in the distance signals Frank beginning on his own end. With that happening, the hired mercenaries begin shouting obscenities in shock and surprise, and Galatea only smiles as she can hear the terror of the men going up against Frank. She waits for half of a minute before she decides to move once more around the corner.

Some are smart, careful to stay behind and watch and wait for what happens with the eruption of violence and death. It is just too bad that they are not looking for their own backs. She takes a few more of them from behind— cracking necks and thoughtful enough to dump their bodies within a shadow as she moves along the other container rows.

When the last one within touching distance is in her sights, she moves along the containers and closes in on not just the mercenary but also to Frank’s shooting spree. She can hear an awful amount of rageful shouting and cries of pain. As she approaches the mercenary, she whistles, clear as a bell and resonating through the air— her signal for Frank.

The mercenary turns around at the side but not fast enough as she throat jabs him. She clucks her tongue in sympathy— throat jabs are not fun, she knew that well enough— the man chokes and bends over as he struggles to catch his breath. Galatea slips her arm under and around as an arm bar and the crack is a savage, satisfying thing that feeds a little bit of her more wicked instincts.

Honestly… _amateurs_.

Galatea leans over the slight ledge, seeing a growing pile of bodies around the open area that houses Frank and a half dozen more men. The ex-Marine embodies a war song, bending at the knee and cracking a man’s skull right into the ground before he back up on his feet. He already has someone else in his sights and shoots somebody dead on.

The detective draws out the pistol Frank had gifted her with and began her own shoot out. First, the ones on the higher ground and not as close to Frank. They drop after she shoots each bullet. The rest eats a bullet from Frank’s own impeccable shooting.

Afterwards, she moves to be on the ground level with Frank as the last remainder of the men run in to meet with the both of them. Galatea reaches Frank’s side, turning on her heel to give her his back after taps his shoulder, reassuring him and grounding him without a word. The man smiles, already with a split lip and bleeding nose.

She snorts, “You’re a mess already,” and it would not do anyone good, if they called each other by their names in front of their enemies.

When the last of the mercenaries joins the soldiers in the gathering, as they aim their own weapons at the pair, Frank finally looses a breath. He leans backwards, lightly against her, as his own way to soothe and appease her. He took note of the red still underneath her fingernails.

“You are always going to be the prettier one of us, _ma_ ’ _am_.”

… … … … … …………….

The beaten mercenary, the one she shot in the leg to take him down to the ground, shook underneath her gaze and as her hand squeezed tighter around his neck, “Who, who are you?!”

She is pressing him roughly to pin him to the wall of a shipping container behind him. She breathes heavily from previously beating the rest of his pals up. She took a bullet to her shoulder and Frank got another that grazed him on the thigh.

She deflects marginally, “Should have thought twice when you crossed a retired Avenger, asshole.”

Her voice is devoid of emotion, a soft undertone of worry for pressed time could be heard by only Frank. And her shoulder twinges when she notices Frank’s worried gaze— he could see the red underneath her leather jacket. The bullet had not pierced the leather, neither as an entry or exit wound— it is firmly stuck close to her clavicle. Her arm is slightly shaking, a possible fracture, and he could see the toll it is taking on her, despite the dark.

“I… I thought you were a redhead—” The man hisses out as she tightens her hold.

“She is. But… I am not the Black Widow. She is merciful, compared to me,” she spat, umber eyes slit in her silent fury, “she has guns and bullets. I, on the other hand, use claws and fangs. I have ripped through and _devoured_ , maimed and murdered.”

Frank shudders as she tilted her head, animalistic and downright primal as she _sniffed_ , scenting the man’s encroaching horror. The man struggles to even blink at this point, terror in his wide, full blown eyes— he jolted in movement as if to struggle out of her grip. This only elicits a snarl through her bared teeth. And her shoulder fucking aches, post-adrenaline and all.

There is still red underneath her fingernails. There is red being drawn from the man’s neck.

“Now…” She started, the man in her grip froze. “There is a woman— green eyes, scar at the base of her neck, sweet little thing that did not deserve the shit that has been dealt to her recently— where. is. she?”

Frank aims his weapon to the man’s forehead, he mutters a vague threat to bring forth some more fear from the man.

“Lie to me,” Galatea stopped the shaking leaf of a man, before he could even peep a word, “I will snap your neck and find someone else to ask.”

Another man groans in the background, causing the man in her grasp to flinch— Frank either thinks that she has luck on her side or she just knew how to plan these things out on the fly. Once more, he is just blown away by her lethality and how goddamn beautiful and otherworldly she is. He reminds himself about needing his emotions on lockdown.

She pauses, almost deep in thought before a half smile forms that speaks of something darker than her lethality, “Also… I will still snap your neck, especially as your irregular heartbeat _tells_ me that you know I am looking for her. I can _smell_ her off you…”

That answered some of Frank’s wandering thoughts. She had sharply inept hearing, good enough to hear the beating hearts of men. And it is probably why she always cringed at strong smells that Frank would also find unpleasant. But with her sense of smell, she could find Marion eventually in this stinking city of bloodstained truths and rotting lies.

“In a warehouse, close on seventh and twenty-eighth, I swear! Please—”

She lets him down to the ground after she hashes out a harsh slam on his head into the metal wall. Frank doubted that the small crack was his neck snapping. And Galatea clicks her weapon’s safety off. The man’s body jerks obscenely when her bullet finds a new home in his skull.

“Thanks,” she deadpans and turns on her heels.

Frank watches as she stalks towards the man who is attempting to crawl away. Her face set in stone, the man is _begging_ — but no one can leave this place alive. Marion’s life depended on that. And so, she takes her aim and shoots with a fatalistic finality. The air ripples and the sound carry off to the distance within the city. Her pistol smokes at the fired shot, she clicks the safety back on and holsters it to her thigh.

She tilts her head to the sky, her face touched with emotion and betrayed her struggles for others to see. The soldier had been trained to mete out all this death, the detective vowed to take on the burdens to find the truth and bring out rightful justice, but the woman who held secrets both lifelong and only of mere seconds did not follow such vows or gray morals. One more life to stain her dove hands, one more death to haunt her with a ghost.

Frank watches as she presses her hand to her other opposite shoulder, hissing as she applies pressure to her own gunshot wound. She looks to him, grays dark enough to match his whiskey. And she smiles wearily, sadly.

Lockdown. They both needed it.

… … … … … …………….

They took the time to remove the bullet in her shoulder. They took the time to stitch his thigh back up.

And when they sat in the truck fully stocked with all kinds of weapons— with bleeding hearts and bloodhound-like instincts that run through their individual bodies evoking adrenaline, they fall into the familiar silence as the truck is driven back into the city.

Frank notices that she has that stillness return, the lethality tightly wound back up and the smoke of her eyes no longer shifts. The huntress had been sated but still lingers. She is wary as she looks out the window his truck, her arm with the uninjured shoulder is leaning against the door as she is frowning. The worldly weariness clings to her shoulders but is not dragging her down— she is alert and watching for something.

As if she knows something that he does not.

“What is going on in that head of yours?” He questions lightly, makes it sound like a regular conversation whenever they are on her couch and watching his mutt and her cats interact with one another.

She has a thoughtful gaze as she looks back down to him, the distance is back up but it has been a thing that is far too weak now, “Marion will need to move after this… I might have a friend who could look after her. In San Francisco.”

Frank turns onto a street, carefully intoning, “It would be for the best…”

“The cats would go with her, I would feel better with them with her,” her soft admission shocks Frank as he turns another corner.

He thinks of it as a change— something more monumental than just Marion leaving. Something else is on the horizon. And he knows it has more to do with the both of them too. They left a lot of bodies. Someone would come digging.

“She can take Jack too,” he offers, lowly and close to a whisper.

A soft sigh leaves her, both in relief but also in acceptance. They both knew that changes were coming. They were acknowledging it.

Galatea looks to him, those umber eyes of grays and browns, that smoke to shift, that lethality, nearly covers her crushing emotions. But he knows her too well now. He knows her and the distance, that he put up and she respected that need of it and they had used Marion to add on as buffer, that wall has come crumbling down.

And they both knew it. But they did not know what to do now.

… … … … … …………….

The warehouse is quiet, a looming structure in the darkest part of the city that never rests. The wind sings a plangent sound, the stars are dim and the city lights do not reach here. The leather jacket is back over her shoulders, the twinge of pain still in the background and it is a matching tithe to his thigh.

Galatea lifts her nose in the air. Frank keeps himself quiet. No one else is here.

But there is a pungent smell. It is death. There is a slight fear in those eyes of gray but that is not enough to incite Frank’s worry and curiosity. Galatea leads the way to the front door of the warehouse. And they find a slaughterhouse.

There is nothing but cold, unmoving bodies sprawled everywhere. There are bullet casings littered on the floor. But Marion is not on this floor.

Frank nearly gags. Galatea is green in her face, she covers her mouth and nose. She falls to her knees at the scent, falls in a pool of blood and she is close to retching her body’s worth. Frank is quick to pull her out and shut the warehouse door.

“Christ— what the hell was that? What the _fuck_ was that?!” Frank is coughing.

Galatea curls in on herself, ignoring the fact that one hand is bloodied with red and soaking in her jeans. Her body shakes violently— she coughs and scratches at her nose— she cannot get the scent out of her nose. She can’t stop breathing it in. Her mind reels with disgust and the pungency of the warehouse, of the city, of the world.

When Frank notices her gasping and scratching at herself, she is smearing the blood on her face. He grabs at her with a curse leaving him so aggressively that it another thing to add onto the tally of shit that has been dealt today. He yanks her up into a kneeling position, clutches her hands to stop her flailing and cups her face after she keeps herself still.

“Come on, breathe with me. Breathe, Galatea.”

She barely anchors herself to him, nostrils flaring and eyes of gray darkening enough to nothing but black. Her dove hands are covered in the spoiled blood and her face smeared with it now. Frank tries to wipe at it but only worsens the smears.

“Breathe, you’re with me, remember?”

Her entire body shudders, eyes snapping back to him and hands clawing at her own thighs. She takes in gulps of air and stills again when she smells it. The scent of artificial fruity shampoo. And blood, so much blood. The city is wretched, it stinks, and it will not leave her nose.

She is moving though; she barely remembers even standing back up and running after the scent of Marion. That small sliver of salvation, that little bit of respite, that hope that the little bird embodies. She cannot be dead, she cannot— or Galatea would not be able to know what to do.

It is the second floor of the warehouse that Frank follows after her.

They barge through the second-floor door, she nearly has the damn doors unhinged because she does not care about the strength has in her fingertips. The huntress approaches the unmoving form of Marion. A small sniff for proof of life and a soft sigh of sweet relief informed Frank that the slender, beaten woman is still alive.

The city still stinks, the scent will not leave her still.

Galatea wiped at the blood again, only for it spread from her mouth and to her cheek before she is spitting on the floor with a grimace. There is a growl that she vaguely aware of. She stands in front of Marion, relief and concern is etched on the dusky skin of the shapeshifter. She reaches to touch at the unmoving form of Marion but stopped when Galatea realized the blood on her is soaking on her skin and wet enough to be dripped from her fingertips.

She withdraws her hands, soft vulnerability in her eyes from the moment of realizing how she cleared a blood path and is presently reaping the horror of what she returned to. A past self, a beast so bloodthirsty and ravenous for violence. All of it— for the compromised safety of one person.

And the stench in her nose is still with her. She hates this city more than ever.

Frank felt a sledgehammer break through his ribcage, heart gripping itself tight at the unfiltered emotion on the shapeshifter’s face. As she backed up, with a sob and tears filling her eyes, his heart only gripped tighter. She stepped back to stop any more blood from coming into contact with the bound Marion, who is freely bleeding from her endured torture.

Whoever had been here for Marion’s torture had also been the ones to kill all those people on the first floor. And Marion still needed to be looked after— the bruising and the cuts on her are superficial, but she had still fallen unconscious.

Frank stepped up, releasing Marion’s wrists from the handcuffs and untying her ankles from the legs of the chair. He scooped the woman up in his arms, carrying her bridal style as he had once for Galatea. He heard the bang and shrill shriek of the warehouse’s door flying open.

Galatea had fled.

Frank sighed, gently and slowly walked out the door as smoothly as possible to not upset any of the wounds anymore.


	11. Hunter

**When it comes to war, ending with buried dead and the bloodied victors, the world seems to never recover. And there is always a new war to come in to take the world by storm all over again.**

**But this, this is not a war. This is a new hunt— there are no victors, there is only the hunters and the prey and the graves yet to be filled. There is only the anticipation, the thrill and the glory of the conclusion of the hunt. Only the hunters can revel in the hunt. And she always did enjoy the honorable end of the hunt.**

**Let them cover it up, the ones who wrote the false reports and let the city believe them, for she did not care for their foolish ways. Let them try to forget, to bury away everything behind other stories and try to hide their shameful sins. Let them try. They will only fail in their attempts.**

**Their mistake is that she is still standing and that she knew the truth. They should have shot her down permanently— but her prey had been slow and did not survive her.**

**Their other mistake was hoping _he_ would die in his coma.**

**She buries the dead and a part of herself. She watched when they lowered the bodies of a mother and her children. She watched when they lowered another coffin into the ground. And at the golden man’s grave, she undoes a chained ring from her neck. With a new hole by the newly crafted tombstone, she leaves behind the ring and the chain.**

**And she walks away, her phone buzzing with a familiar name from her previous life.**

**The hunt is still on the horizon, the hunt for finding those who are liars and sinners, but there is another war that they are asking for her to take part in. She will answer to the call. But after the war, the hunt will take its course. And she will revel in the end of the hunt.**

… … … … … …………….

The myriad of colors is harsh to her eyes.

Sometimes, the city had its moments with how they light up the streets and the buildings and the people. However, right now, it serves as nothing but a grating impression to her senses. The noise of the honking cars is distant, the road rage inspired from minor accidents on the intersecting roads get drowned in the rest of the clamor of the city, and there are people still active in the night.

The wind still reeks of rotting flesh and despoiled blood.

Galatea lifts her face up in the air, looking to the twinkling stars and shoving her hands into her leather jacket pockets. A deep breath in and a slow exhale out. The thought of Marion’s blood spilt, the wounds inflicted upon her, has Galatea take in a sharper breath. She sighs out another breath and closes her eyes as the city overwhelms and drowns her as it always does.

“Hey, ma’am, are you alright?”

She catches the sight of the two men, one of them remaining in the back of the car and the other pulling at his coat after he had departed from the car. The man who spoke to her waves away the calculating looks on the handsome one’s face as he proceeds to leave his friend. He approaches Galatea with a limp in his gait. She listens to the hollow _thunk_ of the man’s left leg after each step, narrowing her eyes as she remains standing on the sidewalk with her face lifted towards the sky.

“Just fine,” she answers.

Simple, short— a curt response, sharp enough to usually tell others to keep away from her.

But he obviously chooses to not listen to the sliver of warning in her tone. His skin tone is dark, his hands owned callouses not just born from wielding a weapon. With the way he is careful to pick up on her own injuries, the shot shoulder and bruising above her collarbone, then she had a fair guess on who he used to be.

It is not very often that she gets to meet others who practice in medicine as soldiers.

“You lost, ma’am? I can call someone for you.”

He stands next to her now, a hand holding a cellphone and the other up in the air as a way to placate her. The concern in his eyes has her frown as he takes a glance down to her legs, even in the dark of the city the dried blood is still noticeable, and her leather jacket had also been left open. He could see the bruising to her collarbone from when she had been shot in the shoulder.

She pulls out her badge from her leather jacket, flicking it open to reveal her credentials as she grins stiffly, “Do I look lost?”

She faces him now; he is taller than her as most people are. He has a predilection to leaning on his right side, to avoid pressure on his left leg. People with amputees were never truly comfortable with their prosthetics, no matter how well fitting they are.

“Could have fooled me, ma’am,” the man chuckles, pocketing his phone and shakes his head as the concern leaves his expressive face.

He waves at the man in the car, giving some sort of signal that has the man closing the door to the car and it drives off within seconds. Galatea and her new acquaintance stand together in silence for a few more moments. She pockets her badge and looks across the street, ignoring the wary glances from him.

“Rough night?”

Oh, he could say that again. And she feels like she should ask him the same thing. She takes in his haphazardly undone tie, the slumped shoulders and the dark circles under his eyes. But she only nods to him, offering a look of sympathy to his own state.

“You Americans are good at causing mayhem. I should have just stayed back in Athens, all those years ago. But then again, duty calls, even if I was taking personal time in London,” she jokes, adding information to distract him from looking to closely at her again.

He chuckles, rubbing at his nicely trimmed facial hair, “Huh, you must have seen a lot while traveling. What’s a lieutenant doing down here, after the kind of night you have just got through?”

They would make a sight. Her as a New York homicide detective with Grecian heritage and in bloodied pants and him as a one-legged black man in a nice but disheveled suit. People would need take more than just a second glance at them. And this amuses her to no end. Frank could make a joke out of this, she thinks.

And she should not even think about that, she needed to keep things on lockdown.

“Homicide,” is all she offers, but adding in a humorless chuckle with her half answer.

He offers his own look of sympathy, “That’s some dark stuff.”

They stop in the small talk, not because it is awkward but simply as they take in each other’s company. A car drives past them, there is an ambulance’s horn sounding off in the distance and the wind picks up once more. She detests the haunting smell of spoiled blood and death. The man had no idea that she had one hell of night just an hour ago. And it would be best for him to not know about it.

She heaves out a sigh, feeling exhausted like never before, “I need a drink.”

He gestures behind him, to the church that they were standing in front of, “I think I’ve got you covered, ma’am.”

She raises an eyebrow, following him up the stairs towards the doors of the church’s hallowed grounds, “I hate being called that.”

“Miss Winters, then?” He opens the double doors for her.

“No,” she blandly retorts, but not feeling up to explaining as to why she hates that option as well, “Galatea is just fine.”

He accepts that, repeating her name to her as a way to see how her name feels. The man leads her past the halls of prayer and to a smaller area of the church, past a flight of stairs to take her underground. And he reveals a room with a white folding table that has an empty coffee pot and assortments of sugars and cremes and some napkins on it. There are some rack hangers holding metal folding chairs at the other end of the room.

He takes out chairs for the both of them. She folds them out after taking them from him when he offers to getting a bottle that she has hidden in his desk in the other room. Galatea hears him shuffling around the small room that served as an office for him. She sits down with two paper cups in hand just as he returns in her line of sight.

“I typically never do this, especially since you are the first officer of the law that I am ever going to be drinking with, but I think we can make this an exception,” he cracks open the bottle as he sits down with a heaving sigh of relief.

She laughs, “I think we can, and keep it a secret.”

They pour the alcohol into the cups. He settles the bottle onto the floor next to his side and they tap the paper cups together in a mock display for cheers. He sips first and she follows. She coughs lightly, she never was one to drink— never felt the need to fall into a spiral of losing her self-control. And she has seen how drunk Matt, Foggy and Karen could get.

“You know, if you wanna talk about it, I’m all ears,” the man offers as he sips the rest of the cup.

She raises an eyebrow, smiling in questioning and finishing her own cup, “Talk about what?”

The man pauses when he dips to the side to pick up the bottle from the floor and looks to her, those meticulous hands holding onto the bottle carefully and assessing eyes sharp and aware. She shifts over, offering her cup for a refill. He fills his own once more and puts the bottle back down to the floor, leaning back and to the left in his chair.

“How a soldier becomes a homicide detective and lieutenant of the 15th Precinct,” he states with humor laced in his questioning tone.

Galatea’s mouth twitches, she kicks back the whole drink and gently holds onto the paper cup, “Tell me how a medic becomes a salesman and a therapist first.”

He chuckles, patting at his left leg, “Baghdad, my foot is probably still in a boot on some roof, thanks to a suicide bomber. I got a new _boot_ when they decided to discharge me as a veteran afterwards.”

“Ah…” She leans back in her chair, wincing in sympathy and at the pun, “I was part of a black ops division, we were outside of jurisdiction. The rules did not apply as they should have and we were fairly amoral, gray in a lot of places. Nothing that matters much now, but yeah, I could talk about it.”

The man sat back, knowing that this would be a long story to come. His smile lopsided with a drunk haziness slipping in slowly but surely. His eyes are still sharp, as he looks to the bruise on her collarbone just above the stitches to her shoulder that he could not see. She crosses one leg over the other and pushes her thick locks to the side, gray eyes distant as she dredges up the memories.

“Messen was the best captain I would ever have the pleasure of following into the field— he hated the fact that despite my own rank as captain, I liked sticking in the shadows. He could keep that spotlight to himself. And so can Karnova— we called her the Gypsy. She was good at her job, slipping in and out, smiles all pretty but the knives strapped to her thighs bloody.”

She hears them, even now, always in the distance and calling for her. They were her home once.

Messen had been the damned best out of all of them. He kept their missions as straight as possible, run in and hit hard and then get the hell out of there, the old man never did give a damn about whether or not those superiors in the command said this or that. He was the shield; he took the hits for all of them in the field and would always do the dirtiest in the deep basements or dark alleyways.

And if it had not been him, Galatea had done it herself.

Nova, always beautiful and never not smiling even when cornered and down a knife. When one is born to triple-sided spies— one a handsome father known for slight of hands and the other is one of the loveliest women to ever grace the earth with a smoky voice and red painted lips that hides the bloodiest of stained hands— they tend to follow in the same line of business. She became one of the greatest in their homeland’s history.

And she would be the only one that Galatea would have the pleasure of calling a blood-sister.

“Then there were the brothers, they were great with handling any weapon they could get their hands on. They were the finest in combat, sometimes they could best me when we sparred, but it usually takes the both of them…”

 She abruptly stopped when her phone buzzes in her jean pocket, carefully plucking it out and looking to the screen with a guarded, contemplative glance. The man carefully pours himself another drink and waits as she replies. He drinks it more slowly, to remain as sober as he could, even in his already inebriated state.

Galatea sighs out a slow exhale of breath through her nose, replacing her phone into her pocket, “The Guard consisted of only the five of us. There were five discharges after a special mission in Othrys. We lost cargo, in favor of the actual people we were escorting— not the worst thing that could happen, but not the best outcome we usually had.”

Her phone buzzes again but she ignores it in favor of getting another refill in her cup.

“That’s rough,” he offers lowly as condolence.

She shrugs rather noncommittedly.

Galatea never did care for the disbandment of the group— because they were still of the living, all of them had left that mountain _alive_. Even when Messen had lost one eye and could have lost his entire left arm, Nova had a concussion that rendered her comatose afterwards and reduced her as an amnesiac for an entire year and the brothers nearly _died_ for trying to be heroes for those people.

Even Galatea herself nearly went _feral_ at how much shit the mission had turned out to be.

They had gone to that mountain, lacking the proper equipment and the fact that they found actual people and not just cargo. But it was not her government’s fault— the mission had been a joint one, they were given that mission prerogative by another government. And someone had only gotten the best out of the Guard because they were expecting nothing more than cargo and not an actual death squad sent for them.

“There are worse fates that could have been written for us,” she smiles to him, shoving the darker parts of the memories down deep inside herself, “the stars, they are a cruel mistress that way.”

And this man; a black, one-legged soldier turned self-made therapist, _beams_ back at her.

He smiles with a kindness that had not been borne from human nature alone. He has hands that held scalpels and needles as well as they did with weapons and they grab hers to hold within his own. The man gently holds them for a moment to squeeze and pats them when he lets go— their callouses scrapes against one another when they separate. He stands with some effort but not in a drunken wobble.

“Galatea D. Winters, you remind me of someone I used to know,” he informs with that tooth-achingly friendly grin and humorful chuckle.

Galatea carefully tilts her head, standing from her own seat and folding it in, “This the part where I find out who you think I can match up with to talk of my woes, stranger?”

Another good-natured chuckle spreads throughout the room as they both put up the chairs to the hangers. Galatea takes the bottle from him as he offers the last of it to her, he bursts in laughter as she downs the rest of it in one go. She removes the trash bag from the bin and chucks the empty bottle into it, tying it off as she moves to the doorframe with him.

He clicks the lights off, shouldering his jacket on with a sigh, “Frank, he is a good man. But I do not think that even you, with your talk of the celestial planes and the star gazing, could talk to the dead…”

Galatea goes quiet at his words. But she still walks him back up the stairs and is greeted with a newfound darkness of the city, some lights have gone off while the other half remains lit. They hail down a taxi for him to get him to his apartment. As he loads himself into the vehicle, even with his drunken chortles, he stops himself to look to her once more with that kind smile.

“I don’t think I ever actually introduced myself,” he starts after he waves a hand to stop the cab driver from taking off.

Galatea smiles to him, amusement crinkling her umber eyes, “You did not.”

“Curtis Hoyle,” he shakes her hand with a firm grip.

The detective laughs silvery as she steps back from the curb, “It has been my pleasure to finally meet you, Curtis. Next time, I’ll ask you about how you handle Frank with his grumpiness and his brooding. He can be an ass, without thinking about it.”

 Curtis naturally laughs once more before doing a double take, looking to her in bewilderment, as the cab takes off into the night. But before he fully opens his window to question her, the detective is no longer where she had once stood and the trash bag had gone with her.

She had just been another shadow that has disappeared into the night covered city.

… … … … … …………….

“Goddamnit.”

Frank opens the door to the apartment, carrying Marion as carefully as he could. But even as he closes the door, the young woman whimpers and clutches at his jacket in pain. He is quick to move her to the dining table, the same one that he had been patched up on, on a similar night like this too. He remembered the way she had looked at him, how she cared for him.

Lockdown, he needed to keep that on lockdown.

“Pete?” Her voice is small and only a whisper.

He grabs the emergency medical kit that he knew Galatea had underneath the countertop in her kitchen, returning to Marion’s side, “Yeah, yeah, I’m here, girl.”

Marion wiggles slightly, much to Frank’s chagrin as her actions only elicits more of pain from her injuries. The redhead is looking for _something_ as her tearful eyes takes in the surroundings of the apartment she left, with the intention of returning to, only after she got desert for an abandoned dinner that had been put into the fridge after her kidnapping.

She notices the distinct emptiness of the apartment that she had grown so familiar with in only a month’s time. She knew that Galatea is nowhere near. Frank had been devastated but he understood the need to run away— Galatea had run because she thought she had nearly lost Marion, but only to find her hurt once more in some warehouse with a lot of dead people on the first floor. And the detective had all that violence and death on her conscience.

“Where’s Galatea?” Her voice is cracked from being parched and thirsty.

He hands her a water bottle and some painkillers, shuffling through the box and picking out the items he needed. She had a few cuts and scrapes, defensive wounds on her knuckles and wrists. There is bruising and cuts all over but nothing life-threatening. She barely lost any blood but the shock and the fear must have been the cause of her fainting once more.

He takes out some wipes and gauze, “She went out, taking care of some things. I need to get you cleaned up or I get my ass handed by her.”

She laughs lightly, the both of them knowing full well that Galatea would, and the little bird is flinching as she touches the bottle to her split lip. He shuffles through for more gauze and some medical tape. She looks to him curiously as she watches him.

“I’ll get some ice for that. Just sit still,” he frowns at her as he pulls out a needle and string.

She manages out a question, after pausing for her settling her thoughts and sitting as still as possible, “Do you think she is mad at me?”

Frank pauses, hackles rising at the assumption and growling out, “No.”

She flinches at the curt answer. He forces himself to relax, taking a breath to calm himself down. He carefully wipes the disinfectant on her knuckles as gently as he can. She bites the inside of her cheek and tries to stifle the whimpers of instinctual pain.

“No, Marion, no matter how bad things are, I don’t think tha’ she would ever be mad at you,” he sighs lowly when he hears her as she sniffles.

She frowns, almost defiant but still unsure of everything, “She taught me how to fight, but I couldn’t against _them_.”

Frank closes his eyes— he knew that too, of course. He had given some pointers, he had volunteered himself as Galatea and Marion had been of similar body types, on the lighter side and no where near as tall as himself. Galatea had demonstrated to Marion on how to take down people of his size and build. Galatea had done a damn good job of teaching the little bird. But teaching could only do so much.

He also knew that no matter how many times Marion had actually practiced with him, he knew that she lacked the conviction that Galatea had spoken her doubts of. Marion had a gentle heart. Galatea and himself were just those who had that killer instinct and the predisposition as soldiers.

The two of them had stained their hands once more, for the young woman he is cleaning up. That is on his conscience too.

“She taught you to defend yourself. She would not teach to kill or to take lives. Now, we gotta get you patched up,” he wipes away the dried blood with soaked towels.

They both stay quiet after he begins stitching up the cut on her upper arm, she dug her nails into her thigh whenever he pierced her skin. He would wipe away whatever blood would well up. He wrapped up her bloodied fingertips, careful to not apply too much pressure to her chipped fingernails.

“Dereck, he, he took something. It was in a suitcase, but he said it was something that could be used as a weapon. I don’t know what he did with it,” she confesses quietly, looking down in shame.

He wipes some more at another of the cuts that would need stitches, “Doesn’t matter what he took, all those assholes are gone now. They are not gonna touch you ever again, you hear?”

“Galatea told me that you were a soldier… said that you and her had similar jobs,” she chews at her cheek again, jumping at the feeling of the needle on her skin again.

Frank stops at that, clipping off the stitch’s end. He thinks of his last deployment. He knew that she also had done some similar missions. Galatea had admitted to filling in when it got too much for her captain. Galatea had done some torture of her own. And Frank is not one too judge her for it when he done it too.

He remembers that she also had been a sniper when she was not patching up her teammates.

He chuckles low in his self-deprecation, “Yeah, I guess we did. But she was more a medic, she does prettier stitches.”

Marion takes a look to her arms and the other small stitch work he had done on her. She twitches out a small smile, always one to hide behind a pretty little smile and always one to try to soften and honey her words. He chuckles at that too— he knew his stitch work was shit. Most of his scars came from his half assed jobs of stitching himself together when he refused to let himself get patched up by his team medics in the past or more recently by Galatea.

“I think these ones look fine, Pete,” her smile is convincing, but she winces when she remembers her split lip as she tries to grin.

“Yeah, well, she coulda done better,” he winds up the stitch with the clamp and pulls it through with the tweezers.

They fall into the camaraderie and silence, he gets her an icepack for the split lip and begins on the last stitch that is needed on her. He puts on some of the strips for her eyebrow and lip, gently patting her on the shoulder as she tries to ignore the needle piercing her skin for the last stitch.

“What, what’s gonna happen to me now, Pete?” Her green eyes are as haunting as the gleaming ones that look at the both of them in the dark of the apartment.

He pauses, hands bloody but still and cold as he snips off the last of the stitch’s end, “She has a friend, someone who can take you in and keep you safe.”

The silence is a different kind of killer than he is.

“Someone in San Francisco, she says you can even take the cats. I am offering Jack too,” he attempts to smile at her.

She tears up, holding the icepack to her split lip.

He sighs dejectedly, “Look, she’s, she is trying. She knew that keeping you around could have ended up like this— not completely. But she took that risk and it was a bad gamble. I will even take her onto a mat for it. But you gotta know, you gotta— she cares about you.”

The young woman nods, tears spilling over her delicate features. She is one of those beautiful criers, Maria had been too. He flinches at the thought and carefully extracts himself, divorcing himself from those flooding emotions and forcing himself to clean up the utensils.

“You’ll take Jack. I got things I need to do, and I will feel better knowing that he is looking after you, yeah?” He begins packing the needle and string and the medical tape.

Marion nods, “Okay, okay.”

“It will probably take a day or two, calling for her friend and then sending you on the way,” he closes the medical box and cleans his hands with one of the towels.

“Do you think someone is going to follow me?” Her voice is again a whisper in the dark.

He sighs, exhausted and ready to crash on the couch he had come to know for in a month’s time, “She has a way of leaving things to the open, you know that. But I’m guessing that her friend will be able to take care of you and whoever does follow.”

“Okay…” She looks around, trying for some more conversation to calm her down.

He rubs at his face, pinching his nose and licking his lips before he returns to her side again, “You did good, girl. You did the best you could. You gotta leave the rest of it to her and me.”

“I trust you,” her gleaming green eyes are painfully similar to Hunter’s.

Well, she should not. He could not stand the open honesty on her face— he did not deserve that. He knew that Galatea had felt the same. Because he knew that teaching Marion how to fight and to defend herself against others had been a way to teach Marion on how to defend herself from Galatea. Galatea and Frank were still one of the dangerous ones in Marion’s life.

Galatea did not trust herself with Marion’s safety— she only ensured that Marion would be able to defend herself against anyone and everyone.

“Go and get some sleep,” he pats her on the head, leading her to the guest room that she had been occupying since she had moved into Galatea’s apartment.

She approaches the door, turning around to him and smiling as she usually does. Or at least as much as she could with the icepack to her split lip. The little bird with the regrown wings wraps her arm around him into a half hug, squeezing him as tightly as she could with her thin arms.

“Good night, Pete.”

He is tense but holds her, rubbing at her back to instill some comfort into her, “Good night, kid.”

… … … … … …………….

“About damn time you came back.”

Galatea blinks when there is a presence looming over her when she closes her door. Frank is leaning over her with an arm pressed onto the door over her head. His body is thrumming with restless energy. She blinks again when he remains where he is, their bodies close enough to share warmth.

“Erm… sorry?” She is too tired to think of anything else to say.

Frank closes in, slightly bending to lean in closer and their breaths mingle, “Where the hell did you go, huh?”

“I ended up at a church, believe it or not. I drank more than a half a bottle with a friend of yours,” she blinks back at him, slightly dazed with him being so close to her.

She had not been this close to anyone in a long time.

And he must have picked up on that, he keeps himself there and not any closer to her than he already is.

He furrows his brows, “A friend of mine? The hell are ya’ talking about?”

“It was an interesting experience, really. Being at a church, would you believe me if I told you I never really went to one in years?” She interjects, smiling as she knows that this would only irritate him.

“Who the hell did you see?” His dark whiskey eyes cuts through her.

She tries, she really does, as she steadies her heartbeat or attempts to, “Curtis Hoyle. He told me about missing a boot in Baghdad. And he really does think you are dead; you should visit him or he is going to think I’m a liar. And I am no liar, Frank Castle.”

She never lied to him. She just kept certain bits of information; she coveted some secrets but she is no liar. And maybe that is why he never called her out on it. Because he is the same way. They were both holding things back and they were holding more than secrets and information from one another.

He snorts at her admission, “Are you actually drunk?”

“Nah, my metabolism does not allow me that. Are you going to visit Curtis?” Galatea carefully taps at the bruises forming around his eye.

He winces at the featherlight touches, both in pain and something else, but does not allow her to slip away from him. Although, he did not need to worry about that as she continues to study his new wounds and bruises. He files away the first tidbit in the back of his mind.

Frank sighs in disbelief, “If Curt does think I’m dead, I would be better off staying that way to him.”

“You need allies, Frank. Another medic on hand would not hurt. But he is also your friend,” she boldly counters.

Even though they did not exclusively speak about his plans, for both finding leads and staying off the grid, she had been aware of them. She recognized it but did not know the details, she had been on the need-to-know. She never fucking pried because this was personal and she respected those boundaries he had put up.

“He buried your family with some financial help,” she continues, stopping him from trying to deflect, “and he was drinking with me, a complete stranger mind you, and told me how I reminded him of you and he obviously thinks something reeks to high heaven with the way everything went down.”

She had not forgotten the way he had been studying her. And if Curtis Hoyle is as smart as she knew he is, then Curtis knew that she had some part in it too. He knew that she also had that clinical eye for things and picked up on the detail that she had been a soldier in the past too. He had felt her hands, knew the same callouses he had from medical practices.

Frank is still leaning over her, clenching his hands into fists and breathing heavier, “I’m not draggin’ him into this.”

She gently slips her hand onto his shoulder, breathing to steady herself and her traitorous heart, “I am not telling you to do anything. But I am asking you to think about it.”

And Frank looks at her.

He looks at like she hung the goddamn stars themselves and painted the night sky with blues and blacks. And she tries to keep herself from looking at him like he is the reason why she is still fighting on this plane of existence, why she feels like she can forgive herself for forgetting about her own past and her sins. She keeps herself as still as possible, her very core trembling under his scrutiny and she removes her hand from his shoulder.

He opens his mouth, leaning away from her, “She is sleeping on some heavy medication that you had in the med box…”

Galatea breathes unsteadily, nodding her appreciation.

He picks himself away, almost like he is reluctant and regretting it, “Good night, Galatea.”

“Good morning, Frank,” she could not stop herself from smiling as he curses when he looks to the clock on the wall in her kitchen.

… … … … … …………….

Galatea did not sleep, she waited on the living room couch for Marion to undoubtedly wake up as she always did. Marion had instilled an earlier waking schedule to match up with Galatea. And the little bird would wake up at five, even though Galatea would wake up at four.

When the bedroom door to her guest room opens, Galatea simply waits. She had not even changed from her bloodied pants, only taken off her leather jacket when she had arrived back to her apartment and returned the weapons back to Frank. The detective watches as Marion halts at the precipice of entering the living room when wide green eyes find Galatea on the couch.

Marion, sweet and gentle and life itself, carefully moves to the couch and folds her knees and sits on her legs. She smiles hesitantly as her delicate hands grip Galatea’s firmer, calloused ones. While one blinked and is locked inside her own tormented mind, the other knew exactly what to do.

“I lied about not remembering that you killed _him_ ,” the little lady of ember and sunshine bites her bottom lip but drives on.

Galatea’s hand squeezed Marion’s back but says nothing. It cracks Marion’s heart at her savior’s silence.

“Even before from when I heard from Pete about what you guys did, I knew you’d still keep me safe, protected. Like Pete, though he does it in his own way…” She pauses and continues, “What I’m saying is that you cared for me, a stranger, and you killed for my sake and I am _not_ afraid of you, Galatea.”

The older woman shifts her gaze, the detective and the shapeshifter and the warrior all morphed into one, “You should be, little bird.”

It is the rasp, the haunting despair a shadow around her shoulders. It reminds Marion further of Pete— the two strongest people she would ever meet, had a darkness most people would never have the privilege to figure out. And it still as heartbreaking as she thinks of it once more.

Marion moves and wraps her arms around Galatea.

“I am not, and I will never be,” she reassures.

A noise abruptly fills the silence of the apartment. Marion briefly thinks it is one of the cats but then she realizes it a second later. A sob, soft, fragile.

Galatea Winters is _crying_. A second time she has saved Marion and she now weeps for the violence darkening her mind and wasted life now that once stained her hands. Nothing can wipe away all that blood, nothing can erase the violence that had been committed.

And _yet_ , Marion only hums, squeezing and clinging as tightly as she possibly could as Galatea allowed herself to let her full weight to lean on Marion’s shoulder. The little bird with her regrown wings of stronger bones and a blooming confidence returning only holds onto her savior.

Those words struck Galatea, she had heard them once before. Her heart broke at the thought of the past being brought back in the form of Marion. And she tries to find absolution in the arms of the reborn phoenix that Marion has become.


	12. Harsh Truth

The thing about grief is that there are two outcomes.

Sometimes, people come to accept the cause of it. With grief, comes fear— a terror will appear from out of nowhere. They will fear the future as they will fear the now. But with it, comes a new way of living. They move on and begin on finding their new path that has divided from the original journey. It is a matter of survival, it is a matter allowing the absence to ache but to continue forward.

And other times?

Well, people just cannot accept the cause of it all. With grief, comes the anger— oftentimes, if when one sits with their loss long enough, they find it a gradual shift into rage. They will burn what is left and leave behind nothing but ashes and dust. They will return, rise from the ashes to take on another journey. It is a matter of survival, it is when they find that vengeance and blood is all there is left when they forge their path onwards.

… … … … … …………….

Galatea always had nights where thoughts were heavy and they would weigh on her. Her guilt, her sorrow, and everything else in between. She would lay awake on her bed, never get a second of sleep, and just get up in the morning for the beginning of the day. Her eyes would burn and her shoulders would slump as she dredged up what little energy she had to get through the day.

Well, now, as she watches a young soul take flight in her own kitchen to make breakfast, she finds herself ever the more _exhausted_. It did not help with the fact that she spent last night bloodying her hands while kicking ass and taking names for finding a single person. No, that just tired her out even more. And her bitter, bitter thoughts returned with full force.

She needed to make a call.

Marion watches as Galatea takes up her phone and dials up a number that never stayed the same for too long. The other end continues with its ringing until a muted click indicates the call being answered. Galatea shifts with her hips as she props up the phone to her ear with her elbow locked into place. Her eyes close for a brief second until call begins.

“Nixe,” the other side is blunt and only tolerant to a point.

Galatea begins, “It’s Winters. I’ve got someone I need under protection— she’s coming in from New York.”

Marion’s evergreen eyes widen at the shift in tone. There is also acceptance in her eyes, she had obviously been told by Frank that Galatea would have made this choice in the end, one way or another. The phoenix of a once broken bird who had been de-winged would need a new home. Such a home that would be far away from someone like Galatea and Marion’s own past.

The woman on the other end of the line sighs, both knowing and not surprised that she received a call from Galatea. The other end is getting a pen and paper at the ready, the flapping of a loose leaf of paper and the click of a pen clear as bells. There is a crackle when the phone is adjusted.

“I’m ready,” Nixe clicks the pen again.

Galatea rubs at her heavy, burning eyelids and hashes out with ease, “Marion Gabriella Anderson, formerly Lawson. Twenty-eight. Husband is out of the picture.”

Marion blinks. Galatea only waves her hand, towards the stove that has a pan that is slightly smoking from the negligence of a watchful eye. The younger woman blushes, squawking in embarrassment, and quickly flips over the pancake.

“Should I even ask?” Nixe has never been the type to.

 She just always had a mean, sarcastic streak a mile wide and pettiness even longer.

Galatea grits out, drumming her fingers on her island counter, “Everything has been taken care of. But there could possible, additional trash to be looked into.”

“Continue,” Nixe clicks the pen once more, just to pick at Galatea’s nerves.

Galatea intones lowly, “Lawson needs new papers. Never married, no connections to her old life— _blank slate_.”

There is a pause before Nixe scoffs lowly at the request, “Anything else?”

“Three live animals coming your way, have them registered as support animals or something or other,” Galatea can feel Shadow’s and Hunter’s eyes honing in on her.

The scratching of the pen on the paper finishes, “I’ll see her when she gets here. I’ll be in something blue.”

“Thanks, _Zero_ ,” Galatea smiles at nothing but the woman on the other end would know that she is.

She had always been weirdly aware of others smiling when on the phone.

The line goes dead after a deep sigh says it all.

Galatea laments, rubbing at her weary eyes once more and settles her phone down in between the plate sets. Marion is loading up the pancakes onto a plate and the strawberries into the bowl before she settles down across from Galatea. The redhead is patient but brimming with restless energy.

“Lily is a good person,” the detective begins before she claims her portion of food, “she makes it seem like she does not care but she has had a tough upbringing. Her showing any sort of emotions is like the death penalty where she came from.”

Marion uncaps the can of whip cream, “How long have you known her?”

“I have known her since she was about sixteen. That was when she had run away from home and we met at the institute that straightened us both out. She should be thirty by now,” Galatea hums out the math under her breath.

Lily’s family was of old money that had been forced to move from the Netherlands to find new veins of gold to avoid their debts made in the past. They turned to become smugglers and dealers, ranging from anything such as drugs to weapons and information used as blackmail. It was all fine and dandy until Lily, a bastard daughter, is the only living heir to exist.

Even more distressing is that Lily had been born with the soul of a poet rather than be a cold-blooded murderer and heiress to a legacy of blood money and information that could destabilize entire cities from the core.

“Oh, so, she is an old friend?” Marion bright eyes are earnest and receptive.

Galatea smiles, “No, we lived with one another for a long time. She just won’t admit that we are like family. She is a tough cookie, but you will like her, and she will keep training you at your request.”

“Pete,” Marion begins, her complexion becoming a little more red, “he said Jack would come with me…”

“Only if you want him to,” Galatea pats Marion’s hand before returning to shoveling her food into her mouth.

The door is knocked on. Galatea shoves the last of her pancakes into her mouth and winks at Marion.

… … … … … …………….

“You don’t hav’ta come with me…”

Frank is nervous, obviously. He is tapping his toes on the sidewalk, his hands clapping on the sides of his thighs and eyes always shifting around to take in whatever he is picking up on with his frayed senses. He keeps his head low, under the black cap and his hoodie is always over his head.

Galatea watches in amusement. She always enjoyed watching him while in his natural state.

 “Curtis does therapy sessions on Mondays and Fridays twice a day. One in the morning and one in the night. The days in between are only at night, so, yes, Frank, this is the best time you will get to see Curtis without too much from the others at the reception,” Galatea slaps him in the chest with a newspaper.

Frank Castle is a fairly private man, after all. For a dead guy, at least.

“Anyone looks at you funny, you are free to walk out. Or just camp outside of the room while I go in,” Galatea smiles as he grumbles in distaste at whatever he reads from the printed font.

Frank Castle also hated reading newspapers.

With a swagger, Galatea enters the church and the room below, with Frank behind her. Frank’s steps are timid, light as always for a man his size. They stop completely just as she passes the doorframe. The chairs were already settled down and the people within are giving her the side eye. She barely blinks as she smiles at Curtis Hoyle. The man is surprised at her appearance but he smiles, waving her to the chairs that are still hanging in the air.

She extracts one, setting herself up and lounges in her seat as everyone also begins to settle in. Another of the men, with a pot belly and a dumbfounded glance that speaks volumes that he does not expect a woman here at all. Classic.

Galatea only leans back in her chair and listens to Curtis speak.

“Alright, alright. I see familiar faces around but just a couple new ones. If you have come to speak your piece, you are free to do so. And if you are just here for the company, that is just as good. Be mindful of each other, that is all I’m asking,” Curt smiles as he settles right next to Galatea.

He winks at her. She tips her chin to him.

“Did not expect a woman here…” The one with the pot belly mutters to the side.

Galatea stares at him, directly in the eye. Something like paper crinkles beyond the doorframe. The silence is ringing. Curt is frowning, shaking his head as if he is willing the man to just keep his mouth shut. Galatea keeps her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket.

_Classic_.

“Shut the hell up, O’Connor,” a younger man with an eyepatch scrunches his nose in disgust.

Galatea lowly chortles, always amused with the fact that others make it seem like she is required to prove herself to others. She is too old for that by now and she did not care for such frivolity. Well, her bark is just as lethal as her bite— she would make Nova proud with the witty smile on her face. And so, Galatea leans forward as she begins to dig the claws in.

“You a medic?” She tips her chin to the man.

“No,” he starts.

She cuts him off with a click of her tongue, “Give me a call when you can name all the people’s lives you have held in your hands. I know I can’t, since not every patient I had, had dog tags to identify them with.”

The silence is absolute bliss.

“How about a sniper?” She questions again, with a tilt of her head and face betraying nothing.

The looks on everyone’s faces are iconic. The crinkling cuts off completely.

Her voice is chilling as she keeps the sharp smile on her face, “War always has two sides, victors and losers. I got four. What about you?”

The one with the eye patch smiles, vicious and biting. The one with the pot belly pales more. And that is how the meeting began. No one looks to her for anything else. The meeting continues for another hour or two. Galatea only watches as the others begin to filter out after session comes to an end. Curtis remains sitting his seat and so does Galatea.

When the man with the eyepatch nods to her as a goodbye, she tips her head to him.

Curtis chuckles deep, “You are a bonafide badass, Galatea D. Winters.”

Galatea stands to her full height, not much to even the one-legged man as he looks up to her with a fond, kind smile. She winks at him, takes her chair and folds it in with both hands. They begin to put back the chairs on the hangers. He is slower but still as efficient and she is in no rush.

“Well, Curtis Hoyle, I have been called a lot of things. That is not the worst thing I could be, I appreciate it,” she hums.

A ball of printed paper is chucked into the trash bin. A man is looming at the doorframe, his ballcap low along with his hoodie hiding his face with the shadows. Curt looks over, somewhat surprised but settles in with a friendly smile to the newcomer. He sets another chair on the hanger and gestures at the remaining coffee.

“You are a little late, friend. But there is still some coffee, if you want it,” Curtis offers apologetically.

Galatea takes the last chair and hangs it. She shoves her hands into her pockets and leans against the wall with her back. She carefully keeps to herself as she observes this meeting unfold. Curtis watches as the man does take up on the offer. He pours the coffee with slightly shaking hands, grunting as he appeases his coffee cravings with the still warm coffee into a paper cup.

He drinks the coffee straight, no cremes or sugars, not even waiting for the coffee to cool down. Curtis blinks at that, turning to Galatea before turning his attention back to the man who just drank straight up black coffee without a wince at the heat or the bitterness. But his nose does a scrunch as it naturally does whenever he has a mouth full of his lifeline.

Curtis still has a friendly, but albeit curious, smile on his face, “Ugh, so, you looking for someone or did you want a private chat before I head out?”

Frank pours another cup full of coffee, turning around and lifting his face for his best friend to see. Galatea nods her encouragement, tipping her head to the side and smiles, proud for him. Curtis just _stares_ , lost in the revelation and the shock and just keeps himself in his spot.

“Hey, Curt,” Frank licks his lips and scrunches his nose after another gulp.

Curt gapes. His mouth opens once, closes, opens again. He turns his head to Galatea, disbelief and somewhat horror. Frank steadies himself, gulping more of the coffee down. His whiskey eyes locking with umber ones before shifting back to Curtis.

The detective shrugs her shoulders, smiling sweetly, “I am no liar, Curtis Hoyle.”

“Sonuvabitch,” Curtis mutters, “Frank fucking Castle, is that really you?”

Frank chucks the paper cup into the trash bin to accompany the paper ball, licking his lips nervously and scrunching his nose. He sways slightly, eyes always shifting back to Galatea for strength and courage and fuck, all he needs to keep himself from dashing out of the room. He nods, relinquishing everything to Curtis’ hands.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s me, Curt,” his voice cracks and ends in a whisper.

Curtis moves forth, limping a little more heavily with the speed on his cumbersome prosthetic. Frank stiffens. But Galatea smiles. Curtis wraps his arms around Frank, squeezing and patting at Frank’s back. Frank mutters under his breath before patting at Curtis’ back as well.

“Goddamn. Goddamn _you_ , Frank. I buried you. I buried your family. And you just, you just up and show up after a couple of months like nothing?” Curt is gripping at Frank’s shoulders, shaking him.

“Ease up, Curtis,” Galatea requests with a hum.

Curtis looks back to her, really looks at her, and then he seems to recall everything from the night before. He turns back to Frank, keeping a hand on him as though Frank would slip through his fingers all over again. Frank pats at Curtis’ forearm, muttering something else to his friend.

“What’s a homicide detective and a dead man doing together?” Curt whispers his question.

Galatea laughs, hollow and feeling old pains reopening in her, “Only the most wicked of things, Curtis Hoyle.”

Curtis glances to Frank. He takes in the shared looks between an ex-soldier and a retired one. There is something between a dead man and a detective that he does not know of, _yet_. He sees the scar on Frank’s head, sees the broken man as he truly is for what has brought him here. Curtis sees the lethality wrapped in a human skin that is not entirely human, who has something else broken in her.

“What the hell happened to you?”

… … … … … …………….

Dadwal’s arrogance would be the ruin of the 15th Precinct, especially if it continues running Galatea ragged. The precinct is losing its only mentally functional, higher ranking detective and officer. Lieutenant Galatea Winters is about to lose her goddamn mind.

And she had only taken a single fucking step into the precinct before she had been bombarded with new information.

She wakes up with a start, pressing the safety off of her pistol in the fluid motion of her having aimed her weapon at the invader of her personal space. A gods awful squeak resounded throughout her office but she only stares without blinking even once. There is a curse on her tongue that is not entirely in a well-known language. There is a burning in her throat too.

_Leo_ , she barely registers the voice in the back of her fizzing mind.

She blinked blearily and glared into the distinct rusty color of his eyes. He had always had a small firestorm in his soul’s windows, whether it is something he is aware of. But he never knew exactly what she could see in him. His hands are up in the air as an offering of surrender. Her neck creaks in protest and her aim is lowered until her hand clicks the safety back on. He, of all people, should have known better than coming up to her in such a vulnerable state.

He curses again, muttering to her in a placating matter, “Just me, Gale. Jesus, the boss is close to running you into sleep deprivation, if not six feet under. When was the last time you ate?”

She clucked her tongue, in distaste and the absolute fury rising in her chest. Whether if it was from awaking or remembering how she got in this situation in the first place. Maybe both, both sounded good, if she wanted to blame anything. She never did like being woken up from much needed sleep. She felt like shit as Leo could observe from her, presently.

“Probably not since before I sat in this office, starting this shitshow project for the almighty fucking captain,” she glared at her laptop screen.

The screen is black. What. The. Fuck?

She hits the side of the laptop, presses down a few keys. The realization leaves her with a growing migraine and she growls. She should quit being a homicide detective. She should quit being the lieutenant of the 15th Precinct. Maybe even promote that promising officer, Mahoney, take on the job.

Fuck, she hated being here. Her stomach growls with the hunger of a thousand years’ old starving beast.

“I’ll get you some food, catch some more z’s while I’m out,” Leo smiles to appease her.

He moves to leave the office as he shoulders on his thick jacket, that smoothness in his long-legged gait is the only thing that strikes out as abnormal considering his day job. Galatea had instilled far too much training into him. She should thank him, really. Gods knew how much he actually endured as he always insisted on being her disciple throughout the years.

He stuck to her far too much.

“Leo,” she sighs, laying her cheek on her hand as she shifts in her seat.

The man stops, leaning his head to side just enough to catch her smiling at him, “Yeah?”

“Next time, I will shoot you,” she deadpans, her smile betraying her.

He nods, mock saluting her before he leaves and closes the door behind him, “Roger that, Gale.”

Galatea heaved a sigh, her stomach at an all time high for rebellion against her self-imposed starvation due to her working nonstop. A soft buzzing could be heard from her pocket pants, rivaling against her rumbling stomach as she looks down at her revealed phone. She pauses at the answer on the touch screen. She rubs at her eyes in disbelief and rereads the screen over again.

_Frank_ ; now that is a new thing.

After reuniting Frank with Curtis, the two had slipped into their old habits. Curtis called in sick to take Frank and Galatea out for lunch. Frank explained as best as he could. Galatea only observed the two as they ate and conversed. She kept a distance, giving them that courtesy that they would not have for a little while. Especially if Frank would be following with his next plans.

She placed the device close to her ear, “ _Pete_?”

A shot sounds off, she did not spare a blink at the sudden noise filling her ears with a familiar ring. Instead, she leaned forward and smooshed the phone to her ear. Her voice now down to a whisper as everything went deathly quiet on his end.

She whispers, “Pete. Need help?”

Short, simple— she felt a heat of worry lick up her spine as she does not receive an answer immediately.

Her fingers flutter over her registered pistol. Her claws were itching to replace her fingernails. There is a phantom second heartbeat to her already rapidly beating heart. A breath is as clear as the shot round from his end, she relaxes. She slumps in her chair with relief.

“I need help getting out… and a patch up…” His voice is laced with pain and he leans against something on his end.

She is out of her office with her leather jacket over her shoulders within one movement, already out the door with her phone calling Leo in another moment. She gave Leo the address, he already knew what to do when she already hangs up on him as she straddles her motorcycle and flies around the street corner.

… … … … … …………….

“Fucking hell…”

Frank groans as she hauls him along with her. Galatea mutters something that the man would not understand. He winces as they stroll around an alleyway corner to the next building, she presses down harder on a wound that is bleeding. A shiver goes down her spine when he wraps his arm around her own waist.

“How much do you weigh again?” She barks out her joke.

He only spares a glare and a soft grunt in his pain.

She dragged his sorry, soaking ass into an abandoned building which is under construction. She begins seeking the interior and looking out for anyone else around, dragging him and grunting with the effort of pulling practically both of their weight with her strength alone. Her fingers are slick with blood and the rain.

Both the bloody, hulking man and grunting detective barge into the open area, she assesses him with sharpened awareness. He felt a tremor, a thrill of being under her scrutiny as she seems to see through all of him, down to his core.

A terrible, huge piece of metal had burrowed into Frank’s thigh. His face bloodied up and decorated with days old and a few fresh bruises littered everywhere. A dislocated shoulder and the usual split knuckles were a grand sight, accompanied with what appeared to be a knife wound in his bicep and across his abdomen.

She huskily laughs as he grunts and slides down onto a platform of layered bricks on a wooden platform— enough height for him and short enough for her to work. In some ways, the world is kind. But only a little. She is already setting down the medical supplies from the kit she picked up on the way.

“’Tis what you get, hulkin’ ass,” she clicks her tongue with her biting comment.

He looked at her, unimpressed and in absolute pain. And she is just as soaked as he is. The downpour is brutalizing the roof overhead. Her ears strain as she tries to pick up on anything else, but the rain is brutal and she already bone tired.

Frank cannot help but wonder, as she begins patching him up.

When did she become a thought that consumed him of every second of the day? Even when he is out there, hunting down the scum of Hell’s Kitchen for every bit of information of who he is looking for. He would find himself caught up with the image of her suddenly appearing his mind’s eye.

Those umber eyes of her captures him all over again. That lethality and that second heartbeat. The secrets and the truths and everything that makes her, her. Goddamn. He needed to stop thinking of her. Not that he ever succeeded with that task. She is inescapable.

The man hisses at the sudden jolt of pain she incites as she prods at his injuries with her careful dove hands. Her lovely, gray-brown eyes had his heart hammering into his ribs as she connects to his whiskey amber ones. Her smile is reassuring.

“You are a stubborn man, Frank Castle,” her hands, unscarred but calloused, gentle and meticulous and steady, unlike him.

He nods, shifting side to side and licking at his lips as he tries to avoid eye contact with her, “I know…”

Galatea’s hands carefully hold his shoulder and arm. The pop is startling but Frank barely blinks, only groans out low.

She opens the box next, takes out a needle and thread, the antibacterial spray and the gauze and medical tape. She snaps on some gloves after wiping down her hands as best as she can with the little wipes the box had in supply. She takes the gauze and douses them with the antibacterial.

He hisses at the sting when she presses at his cuts and wipes away the dried blood as best as possible. She smiles, patting his cheek and then begins placing medical strips for the cut on his bicep and across his abdomen. They would not need stitches. But his thigh would.

“How do you even get this hurt, _diávolos_?” The Greek is smooth on her tongue, smile sly.

He blinks up, looking to her on that automatic need. This damning need just continues to grow and he does not know how to stop it. He does not know how to stop or keep any of this on lockdown. And from the looks of it, she did not either.

She tilts her head, smile fading a little as she notices how he stares longer than it should be to keep everything uncomplicated between them as it already is. She swallows a dry gulp and gestures to his thigh.

Galatea begins, slow and articulate and still trying at burying everything, “This will need to go. Do you want to do it or shall I?”

Frank bites his cheek, nodding down to his thigh and closes his eyes, “Do it.”

The detective carefully grips upon the metal, counting to two before she removes it as quickly as possible. The ex-soldier growls, breathing in deep and gripping at whatever there is under his hands. She mutters encouragement, letting the metal piece fall to the ground, so she can cut through his pants to give her enough space to work with.

After she finishes cutting with the small scissors, she begins to thread the needle and mutters under her breath as she looks to the wound. She had enough thread at least. She finishes prepping the needle and wipes at his thigh once more to clean away the still bleeding wound.

“My lead… he got away…” Frank confesses.

Just as he had the first night, just as he had inevitably come to be too close to the neighbor he should have never gotten this close to. Just as he had stood over her that night, looking for her to curse and have him leave her personal space, leave her apartment and home. Just as he is now, looking for her reaction.

She begins piecing him back together. He flinches at the sting, muscles tensing and he stiffens under the needle, feeling the thread going through his flesh. He growls whenever she pinches him again for another loop.

Galatea pursed her lips, “Hence being shot to hell, I see…”

Frank winced once Galatea commences the next of the stitches to keep patching him up.

“Which one, Frank? The Dogs, the Cartel or is it the Irish you went after tonight?” Her questioning tone is soft.

Frank froze when he registers the words. He had never told the shapeshifting detective about those he went after. She never asked or pried.

All she does is stitch his thigh up, finishing loops and continuing with practiced ease. Frank watched as Galatea snipped off the last bit from the last knot of the stitch and ignoring his silence as she focused on wiping and beginning to place the gauze onto his wounds. That is, until he grabbed at her hands to stop her. She nearly drops the medical tape but keeps it in her grip.

“How?” His voice is guttural with his newfound confusion.

Galatea is not one to dramatize but she still heaves a deep sigh, umber eyes distant and becoming glazed with fresh tears, “Frank, your family was not the only one lost in that park.”

… … … … … …………….

**After avoiding those in the suits, she managed to find the man, the _live_ father of that family of three.**

**With light steps, she closes the door to the hospital room. The heat of her wounds still harsh, making her dizzy with the blood loss and the deep ache a twin pain to her heart. Her umber eyes find a solitary bed, a monitor and just space filled in with the noise of the beeping. The man lying on the bed is bandaged up to hell as far as she can see with his head and arms. His chest rises and falls just as slowly.**

**Damn. He is _comatose_.**

**Well, it is said those in a coma can still hear people. She strolled to the clipboard holder at the end of the bed, flipped through the medical files with meticulous fingers. Her eyebrows furrowed, taking in the details and the small annotations of the doctors and the nurses. He suffered a lot to have so much scar tissue… but what interested her is the small paragraph of his military service.**

**She can read the hastily written observations, the rushed prescriptions and signed treatments. There is a history of gunshot wounds and knife wounds that added all that scar tissue. There have been bones broken from deployments in his x-rays.**

**A soldier, a _Marine_ , had returned home from war.**

**“Frank Castle…” Galatea Winters spoke his name, voice scratchy, grim but soft enough as a whisper.**

**A slight rise in his heart beat wrote itself on the ECG monitor. She drops the files back into the place holder, she grabs the stroller chair to sit closer to his ear level. Her mouth feels dry and her hearing is strained to listen for anything outside of the room. She does not have much time.**

**“You do not know me. But I was also in the park, they killed my… someone I loved. And they killed your family, so we know each other enough,” she begins with articulate pronunciation.**

**There is no response but she feels she did not need to try too hard for his response. So long as he could _hear_ her. And if she knew anything, most monitors do not just rise like that unless it is short of a miraculous path to becoming not as nearly dead or from a coma.**

**She hisses at a spike trailing up her spine, baring her teeth and licking her lips, “I don’t know what the hell happened to warrant a goddamn _death squad_ at the park, but I do know that it was composed of the Kitchen Irish, Dogs of Hell, and the Cartel…”**

**Silence.**

**“I may have found the person who killed _my_ family… but yours is still out there. So, you can lay your ass here all you want or you can get the _fuck_ up, Frank Castle,” she hears the elevator dinging.**

**She grabs at his hand, squeezing it, squeezing it like she can wake him the hell back up with her very will and soul and everything else left in her. And her other hand finds its way to her stomach, feeling the slight round raise of her abdomen, the last evidence of what could have been. The tears fall from the corner of her eyes.**

**She does not wince at the next wave of cramps, her body naturally ejecting the remnants of the mixing of her golden lover and herself. The pain at her hip, a bullet that ripped right through her and flooded her children in blood and stealing the support needed to keep them alive in her womb.**

**She lets go of Frank Castle’s hand, wiping away the burning tears from her eyes.**

**Galatea stood from her seat, kicked it to a lonesome corner, “Semper fi, Marine. From a retiree to you, I sincerely hope you fuck them all up. You still got a mission to do… _soldier_ …”**

**She does not see the twitch in his finger as she disappears from his room. The suits came back to check who the visitor was but found none in the hospital room. The window to the room is open, curtains blowing with the wind and the cawing of a crow is all there is.**

**Sometimes, people do not just get over the grief. The grief is a ghost that lingers.**

**And people with their ghosts take their own forms of justice with their hands.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the long wait!  
> There is one last chapter of the prelude to Galatea and Frank's story before the beginning of DD's second season and the first season to The Punisher.  
> I have the outlines written for the continuation of Galatea and Frank going on after Chapter 13.  
> Please, give me your thoughts and if you would still like to read on!


	13. A Promise

There used to be a time where Galatea had believed that in the end, she would be alone.

Before, in a time that she had once forgotten, she had sworn on her own blood with a pledge to not allow herself to make the same mistakes as she once committed.

Before, she used to be in street fights whilst she grew up in her rebellious teenage years. She had thought that she knew what was love. She had made that mistake only once after she had nothing left to show for it except a broken heart and her first scar.

She had vowed to never be taken advantage of again.

Before, she found herself surrounded by others like her. Those with powers that should have only been in the pages of comic books and the imaginations of unruly children. She had thought that she had found a new family to trust herself with.

One doctor who had quicksilver eyes that held a soft, caring expression only meant for a man with claws of metal and the same, shared longevity that were rampant in their bodies. One heiress who could only watch on in despair as she tried to protect those she had claimed as family. One with the powers over botanical life that had wanted love more than what could ever be just love.

She had vowed to be stronger, faster, _smarter_.

Before, she took on a new vow— to serve, to protect, to defend. She had thought that she would finally be a part of something monumental that she could show off. She had thought that finally she knew her place in the world. She thought she finally fit in.

But no one is the same as her. She realized this. On past forgotten ranges and fields and plains. There are clans with names that are only revered in history now. Some did not have that same privilege, some because of her too. In a desert. On the many battlefields. On a mountain. In the streets of a city that she has come to hate.

She vowed to not force herself to fit into another’s mould but her own.

Before, she had once been a part of another group. She had deluded herself into thinking that they were truly doing only good for the world. That the _good guys_ were winning and saving the world. But then she had lost everything.

There is a blue-eyed Brooklyn boy that is just searching for his other half, a man with a metal arm that she knowingly hid from the rest of the world with her own resources. There is a spider with silk spinning fingers that wanted a family that she herself wanted and almost had a long time ago. There is a birdman whose soul had been tainted by his deeds and self-hate but still calls her _lionhearted_ with the gentlest of care and softest of whispers that she can still hear even now.

And on the other side of the world, there is a genius princess that had given her the gift of control and preservation. There is a prince who will one day have the title and burdens as king. She had once helped to lighten those burdens of his father. She had allowed that royal family a secret that no one but herself would ever know.

She vowed to no longer hide herself from all those she has come to know.

Before, she had lived in another city with streets that had secreted truths and hidden lies. She had cared for those she had come to befriend. She had thought that things would be different then too.

There is a billionaire who wields only a bow and the promise to the right the wrongs of his own father but is still searching for himself on an abandoned island surrounded by myth and conspiracy. He had been a strange one with the type of conviction that she has not seen for the entirety of her life.

She vowed to not be surprised when she realized that nothing really changed. It is just the people and the faces and the circumstances of the story.

She had made many vows. So many. Too many.

And she made another when she had found another _before_.

There is a magician who has magic on his side and a will that none can match as he battles his demons and the demons of others. He had tried to beat hers as well. But had failed as she had as well.

There is an Amazon who has closed off her own heart but is willing to fight for the world, for mankind that she has come to love. There is an Atlantean whose true destiny as king of both land and sea has yet to come. There is another billionaire who has made his mistakes as well and fights for the safety of his city even if it means it would come to cost his life later on in time. There are more heroes in the world that he is going to collect to make another team that could save the world when the time soon comes.

There are beings of power and objects of the same unknown that are beyond the boundaries of the world. But she cannot allow herself to stray from what is already in front of her.

… … … … … …………….

Frank watched as Galatea blinked away unsplit tears, took a deep breath and slammed the kit shut. Her shoulders are shaking and she cannot stop that. If she stopped moving entirely, the man in front of her would notice that her meticulous hands were finally shaking.

The rain’s downpour is muted, the two shared the silence as a buffer. Frank did not know how to react or if he could believe it at all. Her own, her own goddamn _family_ which was barely started, dead. And she had found Frank in the hospital after what happened in the carousel.

How does anyone respond to that?

Frank swallows dryly, “What was his name?”

Galatea inhaled sharply. Frank quickly thought it a bad idea to ask but does not think to take it back.

Galatea faces him again. The very thought of recalling those memories shattering her almost entirely. An anchor. She found it in Frank’s steady gaze. He looks at her as he slaps on the bandages and removes the medical tape from her tight grip. His hands are careful in holding hers before he begins to tape down the gauze to his body.

A rigid posture and the unfurling fingers are a familiar mannerism that Frank himself usually displayed. He, however, always had his index finger that twitched as if to pull the trigger of his weapon. For Galatea, Frank sees that her tell is her eyes.

Those gray eyes with the brown specks flicker. What light would be reflected, dimmed to nothing. And they move to the right, away from anyone near her as she recalled anything from memories or afterthoughts.

She chokes out before changing her mind, “Destion.”

She thinks of the man who had been golden with his appearance, personality and soul. He had been far too good for someone like her. He had been a civilian. Another of the many survivors from the Chitauri that had invaded New York with the working of an Asgardian god. But one of the many she had personally saved along with a group of other survivors.

She had kept herself in the form of her panther during the Invasion. So, there had been no way that he could have known her human form. But one day after, he just _bumped_ into her on the streets of upper Manhattan just a little of the way from the Stark Tower. She had been alone, had left the damning building structure and had not even left with Steve or accompanied by Nat or Clint. And Destion Carsad had recognized Galatea Winters by her eyes alone.

Her eyes were the only thing that she never changed.

The lonesome, desolate look Frank hated most and stole her far away has returned. The next words spoken had Frank deeply inhale, gripping onto the medical tape as tightly, if not more, as Galatea had previously done.

“He would have been a great father too.”

The silence is a roaring thing in his ears. Christ, children. Unborn children, dead as his own children and wife. His dark whiskey eyes followed as her hand, those dove hands that have treated him multiple times, they subconsciously find their way to her stomach. Her thumb rubbing in a circle. The soft expression only a mother could ever have so clearly written on her face.

“I lost both of them, when a bullet went through me too.”

She had never been pregnant before. She had employed only the best to keep careful watch of the _spawn_ , as she had once lovingly joked upon, that she had growing within her. She was going to tell Destion the news. And then the shootout that took the entire city by surprise in Central Park had taken place.

The near burning in her throat nearly smothers her completely.

This time a tear spills from her left eye. As soon as it started, it stops. As thunder rumbled in the distance and the rain sings a melancholy pattern, the world is lost in a spiral of disquiet. Galatea inhales and her hand leaves her stomach and shifts to pickup the kit with both hands. Her thick tresses which have grown some over the month is straight with the saturation and still dripping the sky’s tears.

Frank thinks he mistaken them as her own but he stops himself at the thought of it.

The sorrow, the writhing thing that howled in its unchecked fury all vanishes as the detective steps back into place. Her umber eyes are cold, face set into a cool, passive expression. A tinge of loss remains at the corner of eye, but it appeared as though she had not just come close to tears in front of him.

Frank stands, his bloodied hand touching at her wrist, the only thing he allows himself to do with his hands. He had been afraid of his hands once. They tend to wander in her presence.

“I’ll hunt them _all_ down.”

His timbre barely more than a rasping whisper. The snarl that rips from his throat is damn near animalistic as the panther she shifted into as a second skin so fluidly.

She stares back at him, unflinching and unyielding, only nods.

… … … … … …………….

The world is still in the deep of night. Hell’s Kitchen is still in the soft limelight underneath the moon.

“Here.”

Galatea steps away from Leo, the younger man grinning at Frank like he knew some sort of secret. That kind of look made Frank want to punch him. He can only stare, when Galatea slips a piece of paper into Frank’s hands, not bothering to control how she holds them as she opens his palm up to deposit the information. She is closer than most would consider necessary.

Leo’s grin is splitting even wider in the background. It is visible even as he settles in his car, giving the two privacy.

“Is it alright if I punch him in his smug little face?” Frank questions under his breath.

Galatea smiles and chortles under her breath and answering with a low _no_. Her fingers are still touching at the back of his hand. Frank keeps himself as still as possible, wanting nothing more than to grab at her hand and squeeze and never let go. The detective looked like she is daring him too.

Instead, Frank pulls away to look down at the paper. Dogs of Hell were making a series of shipments, more weapons and some drugs in Massachusetts. He goes to face the van’s trunk, pocketing the information into his jacket. He slams the trunk doors close, claps his hands together before turning back to her.

“So, Marine. Looks like I won’t be seeing you for a little while,” she carefully whispers, shoving her hands into her leather jacket pockets.

He licks his lips, frowning.

The information is good but driving out that far from New York, from _her_. That just did not sit right with him in his gut, his very bones. But he relents. He made a promise. He has a mission to do. All of them, dead.

“Yeah, shapeshifter. Looks like,” he quips, huffing a little whilst his mouth quirks up in a half smile with one corner of his mouth.

Galatea laughs. Not many had the fortitude to use that as a nickname.

“Take care of yourself, Frank…” She cannot stop herself from touching his shoulder.

He shifts his gaze, looks to the trunk but looks back to her. Frank had always looked back to her— just would. It is automatic, nearly pure instinct by now. And he would be damned, if it also did not mean more than it should have. The unspoken feelings that have been brewing under their gentle, albeit unwitting, nurture had left nothing to the imagination.

He licks his lips once more, gruffly muttering his next words, “I’ll be back, before you know it. Not that this mug is all that good to miss.”

And she stares at him. That same devilish, may care attitude softened as she is keeping the eye contact between them.

“Considering what will be going on— yeah, I might miss you a lot more,” she retorts with a half-smile of her own before it slips away from her.

He sniffs, rubs at his nose and has that nervous tick of his trigger finger. Galatea bit into her bottom lip, hands clapped together, and eyes looking to the right.

“It is getting hot, will be on the road out there…” She is _not_ stalling, just did not want to say good bye either, “You’ve got my number, so call me. Call Marion, if you can’t otherwise.”

Frank nods. But he too is pausing. He looks from one side to the other, almost as if he is paranoid for others to be watching. He hated the thought of leaving. He hated the thought of not seeing her more.

“Take care, _goddess_. Tell the little bird goodbye for me…”

She stiffens at the nickname but not at his request and nods. But she does not back away as Frank leans forward to her. His hand touches at the ends of her hair. They both stare at one another, as his rough hand follow the line of her jaw and pushes some of her shorter hair strands before her ear. His calloused fingertips still linger, at the tip and along the shell of her ear.

And she can’t help herself think. _Stay_.

Stay with me. She would make him that god awful coffee straight black just as he likes. Marion had bought a mug that said _World’s Okayest Dad_ , Marion had wrote in permanent marker to cross out dad and wrote in neighbor, that he claimed to both hate and love. Marion never said it aloud but she picked it mostly because of the _dad_ inscription. It still sits in Galatea’s cabinet.

Stay with me. She would take naps on the same couch, lay her head on his shoulder as one of the many ways of telling him that she trusts him and cares a little more than she should have with him in mind. He would eventually allow himself to do the same, placing his cheek on the crown of her head and fall slumber with her. When they would wake up, he would lie about having not just taken said nap and she would only smile back up to him, neither accepting or denying anything.

Stay with me. He could read any of the many books that she owns in her shelves. She could accept that he would probably adopt as many as dogs and other strays because he could not bare to leave them on the streets. He would make breakfast while she would with lunch. And they would argue over the menu choices for dinner but make as much as they could stomach making.

Stay, stay, stay.

But instead, she can only watch. As Frank’s warm hand leaves her, his eyes seeming to plead for something else. And they both can’t stop the sudden bloom of wanting just each other.

How cruel. She thinks.

Frank leads her after him when he has panic in his eyes and the heaving breath in his chest has him sitting on the driver’s seat. She carefully leans into his window with him now watching her. She lightly places her own hand on his, he does not stop her from lacing her fingers with his.

He grips ever tighter as she does.

And her umber finds his whiskey, “Take care, Frank. Call. Write. Visit. Anything.”

She understands why Nat had hugged her so tightly. She recalls Clint with his earnest blue eyes and fidgeting hands. She recognizes the meaning of being left behind once more. And she knows that from here on now, it would not just be Frank and Galatea in her apartment. It is going to be the whole damn city, Galatea and Frank, the next time he returns.

And the man with the whiskey eyes, the dent in the golden ring around his fourth finger, broken heart and a war torn soul with a battle worn body, can only grip tighter on her own hand.

“I’ll see you soon enough, Galatea,” he starts with a harsh breath.

He elevates their joined hands to his lips, pressing lightly to a single knuckle as though he cannot help himself, before continuing on with another rasp, “It is going to start with a _bang_.”

He lets go. He stares a little longer at her, like always. And she does so back, pulling her hand back to her side. He jerks the keys, the van starting with a splutter and a rumble that splits the peaceful air between them. This is a different type of war cry, a call for arms.

A new hunt is on the horizon.

“If I don’t hear about it on my end, I’m going to kick your ass, Frank Castle,” she trembles lightly, not allowing any break in their eye contact.

He chuckles, deep and guttural, “Yes, ma’am.”

And they both think once more as the rest of the world. How cruel.

This is an end. She realizes. This is them going their separate ways— they would leave their converged path for now. But it did not mean they would never find one another again. Who ever said that people who would go on a journey would only have _one_?

No. Galatea realizes— she would have many journeys. She already had many of them without realizing. The shapeshifter. The vigilante. The Avenger. The detective, the soldier and warrior— she was never meant for a single journey or path to take. She had been meant for _more_.

She had always been.

And so, as she watches that van drive off, Galatea Winters is smiling. Though it is bittersweet, it is a liberation.

… … … … … …………….

Galatea thinks about the story of the dragon and the snake.

Not many people know of how the story truly ends. No one knew that the dragon, though while they had loved the skies, the dragon too loved the snake’s domain. The earth had its own creatures and wonders as the skies did their own.

The dragon had shed its wings for the very first time since the dragon and the snake had come into existence, abandoning their rule over the skies to travel amongst the earth as the snake would. The dragon fell in love with the land, the creatures and the stories and the wonders that filled the dragon with awe. The dragon became lost in the snake’s domain.

No one knew that the snake, so heartbroken with loss and burdened with the rule of its domain, had decided to take upon its own wings.

The snake abandoned their rule over the lands to traverse the skies as the dragon would. The snake took flight to search for their sibling. But the snake too fell in love with the skies, the creatures and the stories and the wonders that filled the snake with awe.

The search for the dragon stretched for a time and had been treacherous, for the snake did not have the same jaws or the claws as the dragon. But the dragon too did not have the same fangs or the smooth movement as the snake. They were lost in their sibling’s domain but still searched for one another.

The snake and the dragon found one another soon, at the shores of the end of the earth and the skies.

In an equal exchange made by the eclipse of the moon and the sun, the dragon reclaimed its glorious wings and the snake has been returned to the earth it is own magnificent form. In a cycle, with the next eclipse, would the snake and the dragon trade forms. For they loved one another’s domain as much as they did their own.

Always, always did they call to each other with the righted harmony in their hearts.

… … … … … …………….

The city is finding a new peace with the end of Fisk’s tyranny.

The bar is filled with many. The music is booming. The people are celebrating. Galatea had taken to accept Karen’s invitation this once for drinks. Matt had been surprised and Foggy even more so. But the trio acted as though Galatea is just another part of them.

It makes Galatea a little more elated than she has remembered feeling for some time. She always did enjoy the camaraderie of the three of them being together. And it has been a month since Frank and Galatea had said their goodbyes.

“Well, well, if it isn’t you,” a voice cuts through with the banter, capturing Galatea’s attention from the two lawyers and golden secretary, “Galatea.”

Galatea smiles, saluting to the man with two fingers in a playful solidarity, “Curtis.”

Curtis waves to Foggy and Karen, saying a hello to Matt. The trio acknowledges him. Matt is happy with the handshake he receives from Curtis. Foggy seems like he is a little charmed by Curtis. Karen is glowing with another smile. Galatea finishes off her drink before she faces Curtis once more.

Curtis is smiling and giving her a friendly embrace, “What brings you to a bar like this?”

After the two separate, Galatea clapping him on the shoulder and the two resume the friendly camaraderie they just seemed to have since they first met.

“I have been told I work too much,” she deadpans, the upturned corner of her mouth betraying her true emotions.

Curtis laughs, “I’m here with a friend, maybe you can join us. If your friends don’t mind that?”

“Sure. Matt, here, cheats at pool anyways.”

Galatea smiles with faux innocence when the blind lawyer snorts but does not deny it. But Foggy is there to rant about it in Matt’s defense and Karen is bursting into only slightly drunken giggles. Curtis leads her with a flourish of his hand and the two find there way to the other end of the bar counter to the aforementioned friend.

Galatea blinks in surprise when she takes in the three-piece suit, polished dress shoes and expensive watch. Well, that is a little surprising to Galatea. The two get closer to the friend but Galatea does quip out a little before they finally get too close.

“Curtis, your friend is going to be robbed dressed like that in this kind of neighborhood.”

Curtis laughs again, eyes crinkling in amusement.

The friend looks up from his phone, beer glass in hand and the dark smudges under his eyes suggests a rough day. His hair is slicked back professionally, the sharp angles but smooth curves a perfect mixture to a handsome face. From downwards on, with three of the top buttons undone and his jacket is slung over lazily by his side, the sleeves hastily rolled up to his elbows and his tie nowhere to be seen, he somehow manages to appear as a modern god amongst mortal men.

“Curt, who is this?”

His voice is honey, accent rich and words perfectly articulated. His dark eyes are smoldering with the new addition of her company but curiosity keeps his ravenous intentions at bay. His arching brow is the only reaction he deigns to allow as a reaction when Galatea sits on his side with Curtis’ on her side.

She does not offer a hand to him and only lifts a finger at Josie for another drink.

“Galatea,” she answers for herself, as Curtis only takes another sip of his own glass, “hope my company doesn’t bother you, stranger. Curtis just happened upon me as I was with my own friends.”

The friend blinks, incredulously, but soon starts laughing, “Curt’s always been good at rallying up others.”

“Indeed,” she thanks Josie for the new drink before continuing on, “what brings you here? This neighborhood will eat you alive, if you’re not careful with your belongings. Curt might just have to use that leg of his to beat them off you later on in the night.”

The man’s eyes darken at her implied words. But her smile seems to have him reconsidering his response. He is smart to recognize that she is just simply joking. Especially as Curtis barks in laughter, slapping his thigh before saluting his drink up to Galatea.

“You hear that, Bill? Guess I’m going to have to beat up all these folks to keep them off ya with your good looks from now on!”

Bill only rolls his eyes before returning his attention back to Galatea, smiling to her this time, “Well, this lady did me wrong, you see…”

Curtis only snorts in the background.

“Ah! So, you are in a vulnerable state, then. Curtis will really need to be using that leg then,” Galatea laughs into her drink.

Bill’s eyes are now bright, laughter rumbling deep in his chest as he offers his hand to Galatea, “Billy, Billy Russo, ma’am.”

Galatea takes his hand. The detective sees the way his eyes have recognition as her callouses scrapes against his as she shakes it. She recognizes his own just as well. He too had been a sniper as she once was.

Curtis only shakes his head, seeing the award-winning smile on Billy’s face. Galatea presses her lips together and delivers one of her own, baring some teeth and not just her full mouth curving upwards. Curtis is stiffening, bracing himself for the raw humor in her next quip.

“Galatea Winters. Billy is short for William, correct? I am a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to names.”

Billy nods. That dark look in his eyes tells Galatea that he does not like his full name however. She smiles again, to soften that darkness in his eyes and the stiffness in his shoulders. He relaxes a little more and she pats at the counter.

“Well, Billy, do all you American soldiers have the fear of god instilled into you to call everyone _ma’am_ and _sir_? I know my name is not as easy to pronounce but I prefer Galatea.”

Billy smiles, chuckling under his breath and nodding, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Curtis takes one more sip of his drink, gesturing between the two as he contributes for introductions, “Galatea is a homicide detective for the precinct here. Billy just got to finishing the final touch ups for his new company.”

Billy nods, looking impressed but more prideful for being noticed for himself.

Galatea taps at her chin, considering the information as she tries to recall anything from the more recent news throughout the city. She remembers as she gleans through the reminiscence of the small snippets that Frank once told her of his _best_ of friends. Billy had left the service in a nascent dream of a new company while Frank had plans on retiring as he left behind his last deployment to return home to his family.

“Anvil, right?” She remembered enough, Karen had spoken about it once or twice.

The two looked surprised. Billy’s eyes are even brighter with the interest pinned onto her. Curtis is smiling a little bit before taking another sip. Galatea follows after him but keeps her smile aimed at Billy. The man appreciates the attention he is getting from her. If his widening smile growing even more friendlier is any indication.

She informs with a conspiring wink, “I listen to the news, although rare. I might consider dropping in on you, used to be a medic for my last squad.”

Billy winks back at her. Curtis laughs, not surprised that Billy would find Galatea attractive.

“I’m getting a little old though. Last week, I tackled someone and my back pops like nothing I had ever heard before,” she added with a conspiring tone to the both of them.

 “Isn’t that someone else’s job?” Curtis nearly chokes hard enough for Galatea to pat at his back.

“It was,” she shakes her head, only feeling a little bit of pity attached to the story. “The guy just happened to be a slippery bastard and got out of the cuffs before anyone could realize that he is a good pickpocket too. He just bolts right from the rookie I just happened to be shadowing,”

Billy smiles, licking at his lips after finishing off his drink, “Sounds like you have a lot of luck on your side.”

Galatea laughs at that behind her hand. That had been the first time she had ever heard that before.

“Maybe. Or maybe I bring misfortune to all those around me. Who knows— not a lot of people know what truly has been left behind on the steps of a temple that used to worship Hecate, aside from me,” she shrugs nonchalantly as she drops that tidbit.

Billy blinks. There is a sort of understanding in his dark eyes. From one orphan to another.

“Damn, you two are more similar than I thought,” Curtis chuckles and he goes to order another round for the three of them.

Galatea laughs at that, “I typically forget about it a lot.”

But there are times where Galatea does think about it.

There had been a small scripture in pure Greek that spoke of her true heritage when she had been in a small basket of ancient olive branches on the crumbling, forgotten steps of a centuries old temple called Lagina. Far, far from the lands of Olympian gods and primaeval myths. But still with enough evidence that she was of Greece but had just been born on Turkish land.

She dreamt about it often— of a woman with her thick hair that would light up with starlight and eyes as dark as the void itself. Once, when she had been young and still under the care of the church in Athens, she had sought out that scrap of paper that the nuns had told her of. She had reclaimed the piece of parchment from within a tome that spoke of primordial, impossible things— of skinwalkers and nightstalkers and moonhowlers and spellcasters— that small scrap of paper did not name her.

But it meant her mother had left her to the world as she had left it.

_My sins are my own_. _But this child is free_.

She flourishes dramatically with a hand in the air, speaking a little bit of longing laced somewhere, “I stopped caring when I joined up and then ended up with my old squad. _C’est la vie_ , as people say.”

“But it is a part of you,” Billy intones under his breath.

Galatea lightly taps her glass to his, “Indeed, another part that shall define me and you no matter what— _áspron páto_ , Billy Russo.”

Galatea takes a sip of her drink. Billy goes to follow, smiling and watching her as he drinks his own. Curtis rolls his eyes but chuckles as Galatea taps his as well. She takes another sip before Curtis does as well.

“I’m going to guess that means cheers or something,” Curtis is smiling, eyes softened with the alcohol in his veins now.

Galatea smiles, patting at Curtis’ shoulder once more, confirming with a laugher, “Translated in literal terms, it means white bottom. But yes, it is meant as bottoms up.”

Billy looks between Curtis and Galatea, curiosity still fastened in his questioning, “How did you guys meet again?”

Galatea lifts a brow to Curtis and Curtis glances to him.

Frank had demanded that no one else know about him being alive after Curtis had wanted to call someone during their time together over lunch. Galatea would respect Frank’s wishes. Curtis would be reluctant to, keeping that kind of information is a daunting thing to be demanded of. But he had eventually agreed with Frank.

“I finished a case some time ago. Curtis finds me just standing next to the church and he offered to be an emotional support dummy for me,” Galatea winks at the both of them.

“I thought she might want the company,” Curtis weakly offers.

Both of them laughs as Billy wiggles his eyebrows at them.

Galatea sips more from her drink, “A good suit choice for you, Curtis. That is all I will say.”

Curtis laughs some more. Billy chuckles, ignoring his phone blowing up with a dozen and one messages coming in all at once. Galatea lifts a questioning eyebrow to Billy as Curtis is looking over to an outburst of ruckus from the pool table. Billy waves away the questioning look.

“So, what were you celebrating with your friends on?” Billy questions, leaning away from the bar counter.

“That trial over Fisk’s guilt, like the rest of the city,” Galatea sighs, unloading all of that burden from her shoulders.

She looks over to the trio, from Foggy’s drunken attempts at pool, to Karen’s blushing smiles at Matt who is stiff in his posture. Foggy had tension in his shoulders that had not been there before. Karen has a new darkness clinging to her shoulders that Galatea had wished that she never should have. Matt had been a man of many things but he is drowning in something far too large for just one man.

She had noticed many things, these changes over time, with not just her friends but also herself.

She started something that she could not control. Though her past had been revealed, the sorrow is still the same and the pain still ache. While one part of her is now safe in a city on the other side of the country, another is now on the road searching and hunting. The loss is something so visceral and deep.

And her mind still rewinds to rough hands with a gentle touch, of calloused fingers that pushed her hair behind an ear and lightly caressed the shell of her ear. A gruff, withdrawn farewell but whiskey eyes saying something else.

“Right, right— that is one terrible sort of case. Glad that that is over with, him being jailed all those months ago was not enough,” Curtis sniffs before drinking the last of his drink.

Galatea blinks away the remembrance of such a tender moment. She tries to shove her memories down so far deep into herself and nothing can stop it from remaining afloat. Especially when her thoughts always find another path to return to Frank.

“All that paperwork…” Galatea sighs, “So long as I’m not the one doing it, I’ll drink to that.”

And with one last sip between Billy and Galatea, Billy and Curtis depart from the bar.

Billy had wrote his number on a slip of a napkin. For both the job opportunity and supposed friendly conversation. Curtis had bid a farewell and that she should come more often to his sessions to keep O’Connor on a leash like the _last time_. Billy had laughed at that. He even knew about O’Connor. Galatea had patted Curtis on the shoulder.

When Galatea settles for one last drink, she is watching the trio from her seat at the bar. She thinks about what the Kitchen will endure next. She thinks about the possibilities of the Kitchen’s Devil possibly running into the newest of problems of a one-man army that will shake the city to its very core. She thinks about the violent carnage and the smoking bullets.

She thinks about Destion’s lonesome grave.

Galatea clenches her fists. But now, instead of just wishing for another to fill in the space next to her, she wants Frank back by her side. And she does not know if her hollow laugh could be heard by the rest of those who are frequenting the bar.

She closes her eyes and tries to breath regularly as her heart betrays her once more.

But instead of crying of her woes and secret desires, she stood. She stood tall and with a spine of pure vibranium and she walked like she is just on time for the next war to begin. And her next journey is beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LIVE.  
> Forgive me, for all the angst I'm making between Galatea and Frank. These two soft badasses are just so heartbreaking to me.  
> I'm going to be starting the small Daredevil arc after this chapter. I don't know how long I will be making it, maybe two to five chapters. Then comes the Punisher seasons afterwards. I wrote so much Galatea and Frank interactions with the Punisher arc and I want to post all of them.  
> If anyone wants any sort of additional character interactions or has headcanons about Galatea or Frank or anyone else in the story. Please comment. Comments feed me with the will to continue writing.  
> And I'm going to be trying to stay with the publishing dates I had written on my Profile section.


	14. Distance

The first call Galatea receives, no one speaks on the other side.

The precinct is running rampant with the background noise that she has been long acquainted with. Something she has long since learned to push far away from herself, after learning that she is susceptible to sensory overload. That had been so long ago, in a time where she had given into her true nature— concealed fangs and claws and soul full of the inevitable.

After Fisk’s trial has passed, everything now finally keeping him in Ryker’s, for once Hell’s Kitchen seemed in a state of peace. Or whatever state it could be now that crime is no longer as organized as it used to be with the Kingpin’s control. Thing is, crime is still always something that plagues Hell’s Kitchen.

Madame Gao had disappeared in thin air. Her trade still continued throughout the city, even if everything went silent with the Chinese. The yakuza faded in the background as they always do as well. But it had always been known that they were never gone from the city. From two, now neither, the Ranskahov brothers were no longer. But others in the Russian mafia had taken their place, as all things do.

And the Irish mob, as always, remained in sight. But untouchable, as always.

The detective remains seated in her chair, cursing under her breath and the tension in her shoulders tighter than ever. Her thoughts run parallel as she goes through paper after paper, seeing the photos of the group of bank thieves that Daredevil has stopped.

One of them had been put into a coma from the blows to his head. So, it has put the case on hold until it could be determined on how long the man would be out for the count. It still had yet to be determined on if he would even wake up from his bodily trauma.

Only one bank accountant had been shot but would recover with a lifetime of a therapy, physically or mentally otherwise. A child would have been kidnapped, had it not been for Daredevil. And yet, the evidence still remains. The man in red is still a vigilante and doing a better job, or rather; a faster one than the people in blue.

There comes a time where frustration plays a big part in anyone’s life. And right now? Well, Galatea is pissed off with it. It is a thing of molten heat that erodes her patience and a frostiness that takes over when she speaks with her heart and just as icy, whip sharp tongue.

This city is nothing but a cesspool of crime. And it is why she hates the world a little more.

Galatea has done many things. She had gone by other, many names, she has lived in places that came just close enough to be called home, she has met people that she would have called friend or family. There are so many lifetimes that history would know in either the light or the shadows. There is nothing just purely good or bad about her.

“Good morning, lieutenant!”

Galatea sighs at the intrusion upon her thoughts. As she turns to look to the sergeant, Mahoney, her fingers graze at the shell of her ear as she pushes her hair behind her ears. Her cheeks flush only the slightest at the reminiscence of rougher, larger digits having touched her. Her pointer finger, where lips had barely brushed at the second knuckle remembers well of the sensual memory.

She chokes out, trying to push away the memory of whiskey eyes and making a fist with the same hand that falls to her lap, “What is it?”

Mahoney is a good detective. He had yet to become a detective sergeant, but he is up for the running, as he deserves it. And he also happened to well connected with Matthew Murdock and Foggy Nelson just as Galatea is acquainted with them. But Brett Mahoney had known Foggy for longer, if she recalled correctly.

It had amused her with how the two interacted, almost like cat and mouse, playful jester and critically serious king.

“You requested these files for last month’s case,” he replies.

The man ambles across the space of her office, a manila folder in hand and a smile that is born of both exhaustion and brimming with a sort of inquisitive energy. He is quick on his feet, swift to hand over the folder and just as fast to retreat as though he did not want to be too much in her space as he already is.

She quips out in a joking tone, “Thanks, though, I thought that new rookie would have been giving this to me. You got something on your mind, sergeant? Or did you just have free time to be doing this?”

Mahoney’s smile dims a little before brightening back up. A curiosity is in the edges of his friendly façade.

“Well, I just thought I’d drop by. But then I got a little curious… Those are some bloody pictures, lieutenant. I was wondering on why you are digging it up when it has not been assigned to you?” His voice falls to a whisper.

Why, indeed.

She opens the files. The pictures are gruesome, the piles of bodies, the bloody footprints around them, the fallen bullet casings, the puddles of various fluids. But the picture of a single chair, with cut ropes fallen around it like a macabre image of something more sinister, is what she eyes longer.

She recalls the smell of the warehouse, reminisces upon finding Marion injured but alive.

But not that anyone else but one other person knew that. No one knew who had been in the chair. No one knew why those people were dead. No one knew why all of that had been left in the warehouse. Another case that would run cold and unsolved as another secret of the Kitchen.

A glitter of a camera’s lens that had been following her since Galatea interfered in Marion’s life, it still had been following her since Marion had left on a plane. The phoenix who had regrown her wings, and took flight away from Hell’s Kitchen and Galatea, had a new life and a new name now. But the camera followed Galatea rather than the once been little bird with broken wings.

It is connected to the warehouse of dead bodies, to Marion’s kidnapping, and to Galatea’s better kept secrets of a dead man and the second heartbeat that resides within herself. And that just stokes a little more of that burning in her throat.

She shoves the raise of the second heartbeat within herself deep down as she looks back up to Mahoney from the files. Galatea smiles at him, closing the folder and veiling the pictures away from his sight, because he seemed a little more ashen than just a moment ago. She waves to the board behind her. Other files had been tacked on that wall.

“I have a feeling about some connections to all the gang related activities going on. The body count at the ship yard, with the weapon dealings, seems close to this case. But everyone is going on about how impossibly small the trail is now, but I can practically smell the truth in all the bullshit.”

Mahoney smiles a little wider, laughing under his breath, “You are sounding like an actual bloodhound, ma’am.”

Galatea carefully props up an elbow onto her desk, her hand cupping her own cheek and she feels the frosty nip of the ring on her middle finger on her skin. She smiles, a secret unknown to him but known to her. And her pointer finger taps at the tip of her nose. She only waves her hand nonchalantly at his guess, neither claiming or denying anything.

“I’ve still got some tricks up my sleeve, even in my old age, Mahoney,” she quips jokingly once more.

Mahoney laughs at that.

When he walks out of her office, bidding her a farewell and a compliment of her aging like fine wine that makes her squirm a little in a seat, her phone rings. She barely looks at the screen and unknown number flashing across it in bright light, answers it and brings it to her ear as she stuffs the files and other manila folders away to be locked into her desk drawers.

“Hello?”

The silence is all there is on the other side. Galatea frowns, looks to the screen as if seeing the unknown numbers would help her figure out who called her but then brings the phone back to her ear. An inquisitive nagging is at the back of her head but in her heart, there is a wistful longing.

“Hello?”

The call ends with nothing uttered on the other side of the line.

And again, the remembrance of a gentle touch at her ear and the brush of a kiss on her knuckle leaves her skin a little more heated.

… … … … … …………….

Galatea gives little thought of accepting Karen Page’s invite of a small get together.

Just the two of them. There is no Matt Murdock giving his trademark, knowing little smile that speaks volumes of his true sight. There is no Foggy Nelson smiling shy little grins that he thinks that Galatea does not see.

There is certainly no memory of a man with wistful, whiskey eyes and gentle, lingering touches.

There is only the two of them, wine, and cake. It is lovely, wonderful cake that is triple the godly amounts of chocolate. Galatea had always had something of a sweet tooth. And she could not lie that she could possibly be bargained with if the subject of chocolate or cake came into the topic of things.

“And then, the guy just has audacity to call me sweetheart!” Karen blurts but not tipsily.

They had barely tapped into the wine bottle that is carefully placed on the coffee table.

Galatea happily chews thoughtfully on her third slice of chocolatey goodness. Karen sips at her glass before lightly forking away a piece from her own plate. The two of them are stripped down to just baggy shirts and loose pants. Galatea looked more the couch potato while Karen has the grace of a goddess, even in a graphic tee shirt that is two times her size and pajama pants that she needs to loop twice with the drawstrings.

Destroy him. That is usually how Galatea would reply. But Karen, in all her kind ways but with a spine of steel, is not the type to do things the way Galatea would. Galatea is a loaded gun. But Karen is calculating and silver tongued, sharp words with a pretty smile and her dazzling baby blues.

The two of them were women in a world of men. But they had their own ways to fight their battles and win their wars. While Galatea’s armor is a leather jacket and the bite in her smile, Karen is pencil skirts and unyielding poise. But they were both the brains and brawn. They owned that; it could not be taken by others.

And so, she smiles at Karen, the curves of her full mouth falling shortly after it forms.

“Beauty has always been a fading flower, Miss Page. But it does not mean that you can’t use what you’ve got now,” she lightly advises, conspiring tone and a chilly edge to her sugary sweet words.

Karen drains the rest of her glass, forks the slice into her mouth and then fully stares at Galatea.

Karen Page is smart. She learned to watch but not be seen. She learned to listen and to not be caught. She is a rose with more thorns disguised underneath all her ruthless beauty. And she had a damn good intuition that could rival Galatea’s nose.

She starts slowly, careful poetry with the lull of her tongue, “Something is different with you, _Miss Winters_.”

The callout makes Galatea squirm but only mentally. But two can play at that game.

Galatea smiles, tapping at her nose after she shovels the last piece of her third helping, and she replies with mysticism, “Maybe you are just trying to deflect onto me.”

The light blush on Karen’s face is the first bright sign that reveals it all. Galatea could not be a detective, if she could not read the atmosphere or be able to read and pick up on the expressions of those around her. All those careful, shy glances to one another while the other is not looking. The gentle, light caresses shared when they thought no one else would be watching.

Matt Murdock truly is a man of many things.

But subtle sometimes never did him any good. And the fact that he is smitten, painfully so, with Karen Page, is a miracle of some sort of higher being. He smiles more than grin. His entire face would brighten whenever Karen would enter the room in all her graced beauty.

Karen had just about the same sort of reactions.

Her eyes are bright and often wandered to him. She still would look away whenever he seemed to turn to her, almost like he knew that she had been glancing to him. Her hands often brush away any flyways from her face, pat her thighs or hold just a little tighter than necessary on whatever is in her hands.

Galatea had a sort of dark indulgent of witnessing those small moments of fluttering hearts and raised pulses. The longing is saccharine and the gradual nudges towards more is always a sight to behold.

Karen pours herself a refill.

She is fair, with her gorgeous leg length and the combination of her golden hair and blue, blue eyes. Karen had clearly been blessed with her genes and grown into them well. She leans her cheek on a propped fist, her elbow digging into the cushions of her sofa and she turns her attention back to Galatea fully.

The two did not need to fake anything with one another.

“So… since my little secret is out, what about yours, Tea?”

Galatea had laughed when Karen had called her _Tea_ for the very first time. It had been when Karen had actually gotten drunk at Josie’s with Matt and Foggy and Galatea decided to escort Karen back home herself.

But now, Galatea is measured, deliberate as she looks to Karen. Her fingers handling her own refill with care and she takes an unhurried sip of the wine. It is a dabble of sweetness and bitterness that is perfect in its complexity of mixed flavor. It had been aged finely before Karen had opened it.

“To be honest, Kare… even when you know what is coming, you are… you are just never prepared for how it feels. It was just a gradual thing, at first. But now, it just like being punched in the gut.”

Karen’s eyes soften.

She whispers, “Kind of sucks, really…”

Galatea carefully grips onto Karen’s free hand. The blonde squeezes back. The both of them take sips of their glasses.

“Yeah,” Galatea affirms quietly.

… … … … … …………….

Surprisingly, Galatea does finds herself attending Curtis’ gatherings more often than she thought she ever would.

But now, she is a regular, enough to be recognized by the other veterans and enough to be feared by O’Connor. The man with the pot belly from his drinking and general neglect with his physique keeps well away from her, lest he finds himself a victim of her tongue lashing again.

Galatea listens to the meetings most times. She barely utters a word. But she listens and she watches and she finds herself a little more at peace with things as she finds pieces of herself within these veterans and they find themselves in her whenever she does deign to speak her part.

Sometimes, she talks about her captain. She always tells the story of how he finally settled and able to connect with his grandchildren now. He has four of them and they were starting their own families by now.

Other times, she talks about Nova. She talks about the sister that has no blood connection to her. But the two of them had went through the thick of everything together in their service. They had been trainees together when they had first joined. They went through the ranks separately but found one another again as they both joined the Hel’s Guard.

The brothers, she rarely talked about. But she always had a tender tone whenever she would reveal that she still called them every so often.

And Galatea finds that after each meeting, Billy Russo would be there to show up.

The man is definitely a sight to look at, but he is definitely something more akin to a piece of art. Galatea had realized that, much like famous artwork, one could stare and stare and admire from up close or afar. But the thing is, they were unattainable.

There is something like fragmented edges, sharp and slicing and severe, that makes him seem untouchable. But the longer she stared, the more she began to recognize how absolutely, heart wrenchingly _lonely_ , he seemed. Billy Russo is a hard man to get close to.

But it seemed that Billy had something close to affection or maybe just curiosity towards her. From one orphan to another, the both of them supposed.

Billy would often offer to take both Curtis and Galatea to dinner. Sometimes, she would agree to accompany the both of them. Other times, she politely declined. Only because she felt like an intruder whenever the tenderness between brothers beyond blood often made itself known.

“Hey, there, pretty lady. What brings you to this part of town, hm?” His voice is all honey, rich with his accent.

Galatea smiles, tipping her chin to some imaginary being in the distance and rolls her eyes as his smile widens.

“Well, my good sir. I got done wrong by this guy, you see,” she drawls out in a posh accent as she mimics his accent.

Billy offers an arm to her, smiling only wider and laughing under his breath. She links their arms together, her free hand gently patting at his arm as they slowly travel to his car. They probably embodied those rich couples, with stuck up noses, passive aggressive jabs at one another in pleasant, airy tones and their backs straight with self-entitlement.

They often had Curtis laughing as they both played the act for his amusement.

Billy has naturally dark eyes. They are brown, but deep and dark enough to appear almost black.

Sometimes, Galatea thought that they were like tar whenever he reacted unpleasantly to whatever texts he would receive on his business phone. But other times, they were a wonder to observe as he would often be caught reading a book of his own choosing or smiling as he too had a sweet tooth for chocolate and cake.

But there is one guilty pleasure that Billy had.

And it is a penchant for being able to sit down and relax with no one to judge him.

Billy quickly learned to enjoy being able to sit on Galatea’s couch, drinking hot chocolate with her and reading many of the books that she owned in her own bookshelf. He found solace in the steady, unwavering companionship she offered without really offering to him.

She just gave it to him without thought. She found comfort in his company since she no longer had others that filled in the space of her living space.

No longer did she have Hunter and Shadow quietly stalking throughout the expanse of the apartment. No longer did Marion cook breakfast or do morning yoga as a way to release stress. No longer did a hulking man with whiskey eyes and lingering gazes take the space next to her on her couch.

“Why did you become a detective, Galatea?” Billy asked her once.

Galatea had been rather surprised.

No one really asked her that question. Most assumed that it is connected to her service to her own country. Others thought it stemmed from the fact that she had such a strong sense of duty to continue serving in another way. But only a few thought that they truly knew why.

They thought it is because it would fill the remainder of her time.

But really, she finds a bittersweet reason as to why she chose to serve as a homicide detective and a decorated officer in the police department.

She smiles at Billy and answers, “Because, people never really take me seriously. And I get to prove them wrong.”

Billy is a little shocked.

But then understanding takes root in his dark eyes. Just as storm and fury is underneath her skin, it too is in him as well. It is in his professionally tailored attire, his slicked hair and trimmed beard. There is a wildness of what the both of them share with their inheritance from the world.

“Well… the thing is, over the years, I learned something,” she adds to her explanation.

She is sipping her mocha cappuccino that Betty just served. She does not flinch at the heat of her drink. Billy lightly blows at his coffee. It is straight black but the roast is not as strong as Betty would make for someone else that would accompany Galatea in her booth at the diner.

“What is that, Winters?” As always, his voice is rich with his accent, honey sweet as usual.

He uses it as a way to poke fun at her. It is a playful camaraderie that goes back to their soldier days, the light joking and small jabs at one another. She would mess his hair up in the solitude of their living spaces. He would place his arm around her shoulders as a passive aggressive way to joke of her height. They both would play fight over pieces of anything that is chocolate or cake.

“Chaos has always been my closest, oldest friend.”

And in all the chaos, there is still calculation. Nothing has ever been coincidence in her world.

… … … … … …………….

Matt is a steadying force that is familiar in some things.

“Hey, Matt?”

The birds in the park waddle around on the ground as they settle on the pieces of bread that is broken apart for them. Galatea keeps breaking the bread as Matt is looking elsewhere with his unseeing eyes. But he is facing her slightly, a sign that he is intently listening to her.

“What is it, Gaia?” He asks, smiling as he looks to the bread falling to the ground.

The birds are squawking and a mess of fluttering wings and fallen feathers.

Galatea sighs, heavily enough to emphasis her annoyance towards the nickname. She even looks to him, taking in his grin and raised eyebrow. She flicks pieces of the remaining bread at him, only to earn a little squawk from him too.

He playfully laughs, “Hey now, no need to be rude to the blind man.”

She quickly loses her smile and looks back to the birds. He notices the change.

“Ever thought of what the afterlife could be, Matthew Murdock?” She questions.

Something ancient, incomprehensible is opening its eyes and its yawning maw is a dark abyss to stare in. Her second heartbeat raises a little in response. And she fears that the tilt of Matt’s head is him being able to hear it too.

He turns back to the birds, his face shifting into something pensive and something unlike the usually cheerful Matthew Murdock. The man who accepts pies and smiles whenever someone decides to open the door for him with gentle instruction to lead him with their voice. Instead, he is the man who dresses in red and has horns.

He starts, “Well, there are a lot of theories—”

She interrupts him with another flick of her fingers and claps away the rest of the bread crumbs from herself and his shoulder.

“Your afterlife, not somebody else’s, Murdock,” she interjects swiftly.

He pauses, tilting his head as if he is listening to her second heartbeat again. The round, tinted glasses flashes when he move his head again and looks out into the distance. His hearing giving way to his other sight. He can hear the whole city.

What a pair they would make, Galatea thought blithely.

The man with gifted hearing. The other with gifted smell.

“I, I think that I would at least get to see my father again. My loved ones…” He gives way to some sort of reply.

He turns to look back to her again, staring at her straight on behind his glasses. Galatea feels stripped bare and she looks away to watch the others in the park that are nearby. She never got too comfortable in parks after all that happened. She had not taken a step back in Central Park after the massacre.

He asks, somewhat hesitant but curious enough, “What about you?”

She thinks of her years spent before ever finding a relative enough peace to live amongst the others. She recalls the years of no longer hiding but rather blending into the rest of the crowds. She reminisces on the times of being something known but still unacknowledged.

Galatea has spent enough time in hiding. She had given years of being able to melt away in the shadows and to remain unseen but still close enough to count for something.

Somewhere, there are so many people she has met still carrying on with her still lingering with them in some piece or shape and form that they keep in their memories. Somewhere, in another city, a phoenix is living her own life and is free of her fears. Somewhere, a man with his own hunt, his war, is finding all those responsible for the sins committed against him and his family.

“I don’t think I would want an afterlife,” she finally answers.

Matt is opening his mouth to protest upon something. But she holds up her hand, stopping him without looking to him this time. The birds are no longer fighting amongst themselves for the remnants of their feast. The park is quiet with only the wind to flow through the skies.

She finishes, lowly and soft, “I just want to be remembered.”

… … … … … …………….

The next call is when she knows absolutely on who is on the other side of the line.

Her apartment is quiet. She is the only thing that stalks amongst the space. She is the only one to interrupt the air around her as she is deliberate and precise in her movement. Her second heartbeat has become her company once more as it had once been in a long ago past.

Sometimes, she begins to practice amongst moments of remaining her absolute most human. Sometimes, claws would replace her finger nails. Sometimes, her tongue is forked.

Other times, however, her entire being changes into something else.

Something that would no longer be recognized by others. Something that could not be named in mortal tongues. The vowels are more like metal clashing, the pronunciation are prayer of the most ancient languages, the song has been forgotten amongst the stars. The burning in her throat has never been more powerful.

But when she no longer indulges on the changes, remembering the capacity of being limitless, she falls into her own memories.

She thinks about him, about Destion and about their family that will never be.

Galatea sees anything that he had ever been in other people. A kind smile on the face of a stranger across the street as a form of greeting. His laughter just in the undertones of a bright child playing in the park. A brother’s protective arm around the shoulders of a sister as they walk down the street with only each other as a means of defense. The gentle hand offered to help gather the fallen belongings of another person.

And she smiles a little wider when she watches the way of the world and the actions of the people. Life did not have to be disappointing all the time, she knows that. There will always be some good in the world, she has to remind herself.

But she understands that the world is just as capable as having the potential of bad. The world has always been a volatile mix of holy and evil, of angels and demons, of virtues and vices.

There needs to be a check and a balance. There is retribution to be made. There is a reckoning soon to come. The due has made itself known and it will be paid, one way or another.

The ringing of her cellphone picks up.

She is spraying some water on the potted cacti plant that she now has in the window of her living room. The aroma of her dinner is wafting through the air. And she had returned to the same image that she had molded to resemble the likeness of others, to blend in and to remain unseen but within plain sight.

Her memories of a willowy redhead with artist hands setting up the dinner table is a snag on the sharp feeling of remembrance. The other memories of another, smiling and laughing under his breath as he is handing over utensils and the serving plates of food just another cutting edge that has her stiffen in sorrow.

The phone only rings once, twice, before she takes her phone from its charging dock and places it to her ear.

The memory of calloused fingers at her ear and a brush of another’s lips to her knuckle ripples along her skin all over again when she hears his voice on the other side of the phone. She smiles a little wider. And just sometimes, the world needed to go off with a bang.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM STILL ALIVE, I SWEAR.  
> The small DD arc has started, mwahaha!


	15. Small Steps

Galatea is exhausted, the chill is deep in her bones, the burning behind her unclosing eyelids present.

She had just finished a case involving yet another Daredevil stunt that saved a family but just as most things; there is loss. A father dead. A mother mourning with her two sons and one daughter. The horned man in red saving lives while the people in blue are left with the repercussions of the city’s dark side.

There is an ache that cannot be relieved. There is a twitch that she can only rub away from under her eye, only for it to return a couple of minutes after. There are papers to be printed, papers to be signed, papers to be filed away. There are people in the city who never truly rest.

And Galatea has become one of them.

It makes her wonder on how exactly on how he could so easily hide his own exhaustion, his wounds. Maybe he is just that lucky that most do not notice it or rather those he keeps so closely do not ask too much. He is one lucky bastard, that is for sure— Matt Murdock.

Galatea removes her helmet after lightly kicking the stand to prop up her motorcycle to stand on its own. She stuffs it into the storage on the side and just sighs as she looks up to the outside structure of the church. She decided to accept Curtis’ invitation to accompany him and have dinner with Billy tonight as well.

“Hey there, stranger.”

The detective turns her head to find someone waiting at the church’s entrance with two dogs and a young girl. The man is smiling at her, waving with one hand and holding onto the leash of one dog while the girl besides him is holding onto the other dog’s leash. The young girl is giggling, bright and brimming with boundless energy.

Jason Wilmore is a sharpshooter, or was, until he lost his eye to shrapnel during his last tour.

He had been the best in his squad of six, he was a staff sergeant but his battle buddy always joked that he could have been a major. He would have been promoted after the tour but what he got instead was to be hospitalized after saving his team’s captain. And the surgery on his eye was a failure.

He has a daughter that loves when her dad bakes cupcakes with her. His wife is a wallflower at any gathering but she has a sarcastic, blunt tongue whenever it comes to people insulting her loved ones. Jason now just volunteers at the pet shelters and despite his wife’s protest, Jason brought home a pair of dogs that absolutely love being walked by his daughter.

They were giants compared to her but the biggest sweethearts with little Emily. There were even greater sweethearts when Galatea stepped into the room. But for now, the loyal beasts they were, remain at Emily’s side as Galatea approaches them at the double doors of the church.

“Hey there, Wildheart,” Galatea greets Emily with a wink.

Jason smiles as Emily practically hurls herself at Galatea for a hug. His new patch matches his surviving cerulean eye. Emily rambles about how her day went, both of the dogs watching Galatea with their round eyes and wagging tails. When she pets them, they bark happily and Emily’s smile only gets wider.

Jason chuckles, “You haven’t been around in a while, Winters.”

Galatea opens the doors, allowing Jason to lead Emily and the dogs inside first. The man walks with her as Emily goes forward with the two beasts faithfully following after their small human charge. Galatea rubs at an eye, a low yawn leaving her as she finds the way to the meeting room with Jason.

“Yeah, cases around the city just got a little more intense. And not even the new rookies we’ve got can keep the house from burning down on the rest of the precinct,” she informs lowly.

Some of the others who attends the sessions for group is already here. A few of them are setting up the chairs, others are organizing the table for coffee and the treats that had been collectively supplied. Curtis is smiling, patting someone’s shoulders and speaks with a reassuring rumble.

Jason frowns, waving at Emily to come closer and not bother others too much, murmuring, “That’s rough.”

“Tell me about it,” Galatea deadpans.

When Emily returns to her father’s side, she is holding onto Joker’s collar while Galatea is given Tiger’s leash. Galatea released it and pats at Tiger’s head. The dog’s tongue lolling out excitedly at the prospect of receiving attention. Galatea offers a seat that she sets down for Emily before continuing on with conversing with Jason.

“So, you heard any good news recently for your next surgery?”

Jason sets one down for Galatea, smiling and flourishing his arm for her to sit. Galatea rolls her eyes at that but thanks him for it and sits down. Tiger is quick to sit down by her calf and is happily receiving more petting from Galatea. Jason sits down after taking his own seat.

“Ehh, Lila and I got to talking. I’m thinking about not getting it,” he shrugs, smiling at the news he gives.

Jason has earbuds plugged to his phone, setting the device in Emily’s hand as Joker’s leash is around her dainty wrist. Curtis waves at Galatea, receiving one back and he smiles at her wink.

“Yeah?” Galatea smiles at him. “Well, scars are cool and all. Or so I hear. People love a good mystery.”

She often forgot that she too had scars of her own. Some unseen by others but most were physical reminders that she had this body and she will continue to live with it as her only one. It did not matter that she could take on other forms.

The scars were there to stay until the end of her days.

“Yeah, Lila says that she might just have to fight off all the ladies from me now,” he quips.

Emily bounces her legs with Joker at her side, her tongue sticking out. There are more people coming for the group session and most of those who have gathered begin to take their seats.

Galatea takes the coffee cup offered to her by Curtis himself as he rounds about informing the others that the session would be beginning soon. Galatea returns her attention to Jason.

She smiles, elbowing him lightly and advises, “All that matters, is that you’re gonna be fine. You’re healthy, your kid is growing up nice and strong and that your wife loves you more than anything.”

Jason turns his head to look to Galatea with his good eye. A glint of knowing is all there is as he smiles a crooked grin. He elbows her back playfully before he ruffles Emily’s hair. Joker is in between him and Emily as Tiger is on his other side with Galatea.

“You’re gonna be fine too, Winters,” his words are slightly cryptic in tone.

The glint in his eye indescribable by mundane terms.

There are times where Galatea remembers that people are descendants of bygone gods, of ancient bloodlines where magic, no matter how diluted, still remains. It always amused her on how sometimes, she finds those rare ones appearing in her life. Even if it is in passing or a long-term kinship, she always finds meaning in all of them.

She huffs out a chuckle, “That’s debatable.”

… … … … … …………….

As O’Connor finished his harrowing tale of his time in war, Billy arrives on time for the end of it and the end of the session for the night.

He comes in impeccably dressed, as usual. The smile on his handsome face like a mask, because nothing hides the small flick of his wrist as he monitors the expensive, shiny watch. He seems slightly irritated and the black, black, black of his eyes only make his facial countenance slightly grimmer.

Galatea smiles a little sharply, winking at Billy as she puts up Emily’s chair on the hangers. Jason has his little girl up in his arms, Joker and Tiger’s leash in one hand as he carefully leaves the room with the rest of the folk that had attended the meetings. Billy’s eyes lighten a little, smile warming and he takes a few of the chairs to the hangers as well.

“Thanks for coming to the meeting,” Curtis bids his goodbyes to the loners who had remained to help out with cleaning the room.

As Curtis bids parting words to the last of those who hung around for small conversations to catch up with one another, Galatea is already closing in on with Billy. He is quick to give his full attention to her as she stalks towards him with a little bit of wickedness tainting her smile.

Galatea decides to tease, just a little bit, “Little late, aren’t you, Russo?”

The man laughs, his smile warmer at the reception of her prodding. Billy responds with a comment of _traffic_ in his deep voice. Curtis picks up his belongings, chuckling at the two’s camaraderie of passive aggressive jabs at one another.

“You two are just ticking time bombs waiting to go off, you know that?” The man jokes casually.

The three of them head out of the meeting room and go to the streets of the city. Billy’s car is waiting across the street, the vehicle is clean and practically appearing brand new. Galatea takes Curtis’ offered arm and Billy’s gets on the driver’s side as the two of them enter the car’s back.

“Looks like your driver is off today,” Galatea smiles a little too sweetly.

Billy begins to drive, taking the road to his place. He only glances in the mirror to see Galatea. He chuckles, deciding to dig in his own claws.

“What, not grateful to have someone as great as me to be driving you around, Winters?”

The two of them engage in their banter. Curtis is only laughing, shaking his head, sometimes giving his own input but never choosing a side. He knows not to ever get between them but he finds amusement when Billy always gives side winks and Galatea only ever playfully click her teeth right back as a remark all of its own.

When the trio arrive to Billy’s place, a classy penthouse like space with three floors, the kitchen is full of the three of them as they begin making their parts of the dinner. Billy makes pasta, the sauce smooth and the chicken finely spiced. Curtis makes salad with a zesty ranch full of colorful bids for taste and these breadsticks that he swears he can never reveal the recipe, lest he wants to risk his mother coming back from the grave. And Galatea provides for desert, a wonderful lava cake that she learned the recipe to from Marion.

The clink of forks digging into the chicken alfredo pasta is a symphony only followed by sighs of appreciation.

“This is the best damn pasta I have ever tasted. Where’d you get this, Bill?” Curtis is practically drooling over his bowl.

Billy is watching Galatea as she is _inhaling_ the damn bowl within seconds. Her own confirmation is the dreamy smile she has on her face. The man is smiling, it is a part of his trade where he uses his smile to distract, disarm or deal with others. He is carefully spearing a piece of chicken before chewing on it thoughtfully.

He muses conspiratorially as he wiggles his eyebrows, “I might not have gotten the recipe from a friend. I think she might have sold her soul to the devil for it, but I would not really know that, would I now?”

Galatea snorts before she continues on with a second helping. She gives another portion to Curtis when he offers his own plate to her. He thanks her and she winks at him, doing the same for Billy as he finishes his own plate too.

“Oh, _ho ho_ , just a friend, Russo?” Galatea quips out.

Billy lifts his fork at her, waving it around in circles as a warning, but the smile on his face is the opposite of the threat. Galatea squishes her nose up as a sign of rebellion before relaxing her expression to begin sticking her tongue out at him. Both Billy and Curtis laugh at that before the trio falls into the silence.

Galatea is about to finish off the rest of her second helping. Her fork holding the last bit of it to her lips until the buzzing is audible. Both Billy and Curtis raise their eyebrows in question as they watch Galatea put her fork down to take out a small device hooked to her belt.

Her own facial countenance begins to dim into a neutral state as she reads the screen of the pager. The detective begins to gather her leather jacket from the back of her seat and she stands to leave the table. The two men watch as she smiles, albeit as a solemn quirk of her lips, she shrugs on her jacket and begins to tie up her hair into a high ponytail.

“Sorry, you guys, but duty calls,” she begins.

Billy dabs at his lips with his napkin. Curtis is also wiping away any remnants of the dinner himself. The two men standing and smiling, accepting of the situation.

Billy firmly offers, “I’ll drive you, least I can do.”

When the trio begin to descend down the stairs from Billy’s front door, curiosity is a thing that sinks its own claws into the two of them. Galatea can feel it floating around them in clouds. She can practically hear the electricity of excitement zipping from the both of them.

“Mind if we get to hear it from you exclusively, Galatea?” Curtis questions as calmly as he manages.

Galatea is watching the streets fly by as Billy drives.

“The Irish mob just got mowed down.”

The city that never sleeps is receiving a rude awakening. And Galatea could tell that there would more blood would be shed. She takes in the strange glint in Billy’s eyes as he listens to her and Curtis converse.

She can see some cogs in Billy’s mind reel about as he would spare glances in the mirror to look to her.

And she thinks of Marion, thinks of a camera in the darkness of the streets across from her apartment’s lobby. Galatea feels the calling of claws, there is a lingering feeling of wanting to grow the sharp edges and jagged points.

… … … … … …………….

After being dropped off to the Burren Club, Galatea can see the crowds already forming.

Curtis peeks out to speak to her, “Hey, I’ll drop off your bike in the parking lot across the street.”

Galatea thanks him for that. Galatea shakes Billy’s hand, with a promise of having dinner with him again. He only smiles at her when he mentions that the city might never let her go now that events like this are starting up all over again.

She laughs at that, “Enjoy the lava cake, Billy. Curtis likes it too, so he might just fight you for it.”

Galatea backs away from the car and begins her journey through the crowd. People make way for her when she is flashing her badge to those who do not budge. She turns back when she hears Billy’s laughter. He really did have a nice laugh.

“Well, I’ll take my chances,” he argues back before driving off with a final wave.

Galatea perks up for a brief moment.

Just a small moment in a thousand of other moments. But she had felt it. A gentle brush of knuckles across her own. Her head is turning as she continues going forward, another moment and she catches the sight of a black cap shadowing over whiskey eyes.

And that brief moment within a thousand moments leaves her breathless.

“Winters! Glad to see you caught our message as quickly as you have,” someone calls out to her as a greeting.

That is all it takes for a moment to be ended.

Galatea closes her eyes, taking her next breath and she turns her head back. Her body carrying itself forward, to the awaiting group of paralegals, officers, and other detectives. The crowds of civilians, reporters and other passerby’s all fall into the rest of the noise of the city as the detective take her rightful mantle.

The authority in her voice is all there is for those in front of her.

She turns her head to Mahoney, a greeting leaving the tip of her tongue. The man tips his hat at her in respect. She offers a wave of her hand towards the crowd and begins her drawl.

“Sergeant, get these people to take a step back, if you will. Officers, remember the evidence needs to be examined and recorded before anything gets moved. Hope you all are prepared for this mess, let’s get started, shall we?”

“Yes, ma’am!” The voices of the officers and the rest of those under the authority of the precinct sounds off.

Mahoney is quick to have the perimeter set up to distance the onlookers from the crime scene. He tips his head once more to Galatea and she winks at him as she snaps on some gloves offered by one of the forensics members. She quickly follows after one of the others that comes from the homicide department, the detective is quick to snap into observing the scene as the forensic team begins their part.

“Damn.”

There is so much blood that some of the workers look pale or even green in the face. Galatea only pinches at her nose, trying to inhale as lightly as possible before she moves further into the space. Her senses on an all time high.

“This is a right mess, this is gonna take weeks to process.”

Galatea looks to the two detectives, her thoughts towards pity for them. They have been getting the rougher, bloodier cases as of late.

Galatea scoffs, “More like months, worse than the other case you got last month.”

Bloom is a man of tough background. He came directly from the slums of the city, wanting to be a part of helping the community and keeping the city safe like his old man. His age is beginning to show his weary work through his receding hairline and heavy crow’s feet.

“God, don’t get me started on that, lieutenant,” Bloom sighs heavily.

She laughs, low and almost cautiously enough as though to not disturb the eerie scene. She did not wish to disturb the dead. She has come to learn that something always lingers in desecrated grounds such as this. Nothing is as empty as others would come to believe.

Washington, if Galatea remembered correctly, is even older than his partner. He had a sarcastic, witty attitude. People always mistake him to be the good one in the pair. He had a firm belief in the justice system, the people wearing blue were the weapons to be wielded not the other way around.

Galatea always liked him. Because people like him could never be bought.

Washington exclaims, “Where is this asshole’s hand?”

Galatea lifts an eyebrow, looking to the severed forearm of a dead man. That is definitely not a pretty picture. She taps on the shoulder a forensic tech who has a camera in hand and tips her chin to the numbered man missing his hand. They oblige with a nod and carefully take the pictures.

“Make sure to keep both your eyes open, Washington, Bloom,” Galatea requests with a low hum.

The partnered detectives nods in responsive sync.

Galatea moves from the table, careful to not step on anything and slowly traipses to the bar. She clucks her tongue at the shattered wine bottles in the vine-like shelves and her eyes leisurely roams over the mess. She narrows her eyes on a small puddle of blood amongst the remnants of bottles and wood chippings of the bar counter itself on the floor.

Galatea kneels, her ponytail falls over her shoulder as she begins taking a sample of the blood and carefully seals the tube. She smiles a little sharply, whistling a little tune and calls for another forensic collector. Washington and Bloom are muttering between each other, shaking their heads at their misfortune.

“Looks like we’ve got a live one, boys,” Galatea calls out.

Bloom monotones, “Great, more paperwork to file.”

“Probably not too alive, lieutenant. If they’re dumb enough, they’ll go to the hospital. But if they’re smart, they won’t. Might bleed out, might be able to fix themselves up,” Washington wonders aloud.

The bag for the blood sample is zipped close and Galatea continues her search for more evidence. Her gloved fingertips slowly brush against the floor, as if she could sense the person who had previously been in the spot. Somehow alive, terrified out of their mind, brain frazzled with shock and horror.

She huffs out a bit, “Nothing stays hidden forever. They’ll turn up, eventually…”

Galatea is taking another sample of blood on the wall, giving it to the technicians as Washington and Bloom look at the bulletproof vests that some of the dead men are wearing. Washington makes a crude joke before giving his attention back to Galatea. Bloom is muttering under his breath about the smell.

“How do you know?”

Galatea smiles, cryptic in her own ways as always.

“The Kitchen always spits out the unwanted secrets and illicit affairs,” she offers as vaguely as possible.

Her nose flares a little and she just smiles again, like she knows a secret that the other detectives do not. They watch as she begins to leave out the back door, snapping on new gloves as to not cross contaminate any evidence that she will find next.

“Keep searching in here, I’m going to see what else I can find. These angles of shooting these poor bastards is quite something,” Galatea orders, with the authority thick on her tongue.

When she steps out of the building, gaining fresh air away from the coagulating blood, rotting bodies and wafting death, she sighs lowly and pops her neck. She can taste the violence that is still thick in the air of the gunpowder that still lingers in the chill of the night. One breath in, one breath out.

Galatea counts, in beats of four, and she slowly relaxes herself.

As she eyes the dog cage, she spots a chain and a splatter of blood. Her nose picks up on the scent of a canine, the animal’s pain is partnered with the gunmetal smoke and the iron painted bullet casings that splintered through the building and reached the cage in the alleyway.

The thought of another stray has a smile curving up slowly on her face.

She murmurs aloud, “Oh dear… what do we got here, I wonder…”

The city does not deign to give her an answer. Not that she needed one though, she already had it. And she just casually strolls through the rest of the alleyway, finding her way out from the back of the building. She whistles for one of the paralegals that is hanging out at the back of their ambulance truck, catching sight of a pair of familiar men with another equally familiar man in blue.

She salutes with two fingers at Foggy and Matt. Foggy blinks, eyes wide but still giving lip service to Sergeant Brett Mahoney as Matt is looking towards Galatea. His round, red tinted glasses flash with the lights from a distance. It only has Galatea smile a little more, sorrow seeping into her bones and her weariness is weighing her down more.

She wonders a little on what the horned man in red would think when he began his own search for the truth. Man, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is in for a real treat.

… … … … … …………….

Galatea chucks her leather jacket over her seat, sitting down in the chair and begins typing up her report. For a few minutes, she allows herself to slip into the repetition of the mundane and she ignores the fact that someone had followed her to her office. All of it a mask that she wore quite superbly.

“Washington, are you just going to stand there?” She offers, after the moments of silence stretched out too long.

Washington is looking out the glass of her office to the rest of the bustling precinct surroundings. He turns his attention back to her in surprise at the call out but he is quick to slip into his professionalism.

“Sorry, ma’am, figured you would like to keep things fresh for the report.”

He carefully pushes a folder of the images of the crime scene onto the corner of her desk. He had always been respectful of her space, never taking too many steps into her office but still always closes the door behind him to keep the conversation private enough. Washington is a good man; Galatea would feel secure in leaving her position to him.

She raises an eyebrow and questions lowly, “It is not my case, is it?”

Washington shakes his head before answering.

“No, but figured you would like to see them since you requested last month’s case too.”

The bodies at the shipyard and the warehouse. Right, she had done that just to see if they would find any connections. They hadn’t even figured out the possibilities of who could have been in on it. But people were beginning to think that it could be connected to Fisk.

“Ah, thanks, I’ll get them back to you soon enough,” she waves her fingers at the folder and offers with a grateful smile.

Washington flourishes a dismissive motion, with a hearty chuckle, “Ah, no need, Bloom and I got the digital copies.”

Galatea smiles even wider, thanking him. She really did like him, she even once mentioned to him in passing that he should be lieutenant. Maybe then he could have a bit more leeway with the captain than she did.

He smiles, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deep, laughing, “Gives us your thoughts later, boss.”

Washington never dismissed the thought back then.

“You know I always do,” she bids him goodbye afterwards.

When the door closes, it opens right back up. But in Washington’s place, Galatea sees Leo Archer. The bulbous headphones around his neck still and he has a different logo across the chest of his jacket. It is a wonder that no one has complained of his attire.

But no one ever did say much of one of the squints that worked with the computers in the precinct.

Leo’s distinctly rust colored eyes are filled with amusement, “Hey, Gale.”

He always had a knack for seeming to know everything before everyone else did. But he never flaunted it, it is just the nagging feeling of him seeming to know more that usually unsettled people. But then again, Leo knows all.

“Archer,” she greets back nonchalantly.

Leo brandishes the folders to her. The smile on his face wide, all knowing, slightly manic even. Galatea chuckles under her breath. He really needed to stop that, or someone could eventually end up punching him in the face. She stops the thought of whiskey eyes watching her underneath a ball cap, the brushing of knuckles and fingers at the shell of her ear.

His singsong tone brings her back to reality, “Got these for you.”

Leo hands over a couple more files. But what catches Galatea’s eye is the small sticky note that Leo has left on one manila folder underneath the top of the stack.

“You know, the word is that the DA herself is coming in for this kind of case,” he leans in close, his whispering is the opposite of his usual tone.

He is tense. He is ready for the next explosion of activity. Just as he should be with his training. Galatea pauses, her hand hovering over the manila folders. She never could calm herself when it concerned his safety. This— the shipyard, the warehouse, the rotting dead, the Irish mob— all of it could very well blow everything out of proportion.

“That so?”

Leo chuckles low, a mixture of his usual personality and his training, the dim light in his rust eyes leave them almost crimson in color. The young man leaves, with his all knowing smile. Galatea frowns, removing the small bit of paper and carefully studies the writing.

She hums lowly in contemplation, “Now, what do we have here, hm?”

There is the memory of a gentle touch to the shell of her ear. The lightest brush of lips to a knuckle. The barest of contact of one another’s knuckles. The whiskey eyes watching her and almost seeming to dare her to take more.

She sighs, soft and wistful before carefully pocketing the note into her jacket. She looks to the half typed up report on her laptop and leans back in her chair. The small surroundings of the office in the 15th Precinct, the piles and stacks of files and papers and reports all around her, it leaves her exhausted.

How many truths were here, how many lies? How many would ever be known by the city that she had vowed herself into service of protecting and serving?

She slumps, shoulders losing their tension and arms hanging limply over the arms of her chair. Her head is leaning back on the backrest and she eyes the ceiling as if it could have any answer. After a few resting moments of finding nothing in the white of the dry paint, she closes her eyes and takes a breath in.

She counts once more, in four beats.

When the pager on her belt goes off again, she is quick to whip it off her belt and bring it up to her face to look at the new message coming through. She squints at the small screen before she is bolting up from her chair. Her hand claws into her leather jacket, yanking it off from the back of her chair as she is power walking out of her office.

And all Galatea can think about it is that Karen Page needs a goddamn body guard twenty-four seven for the rest of her life.

… … … … … …………….

The Metro-General Hospital is strangely not too swarmed with more officers.

The security man that had been knocked unconscious by the suspect, who had shot up half the floor just to chase Grotto and Karen, came too. His story of the man is vague, claiming that he had been more focused on getting the suspect to stop than taking note of his appearance.

A nurse claims that the suspect had been polite, only asking about visiting his Irish brother-in-law who had married his youngest sister. Another nurse had said that the suspect had been dressed in all dark, black clothes and had been rather ordinary, except for having a few bruises on his face. The man seemed dead straight on wanting to visit just the brother-in-law.

It is said that it is an army that hit the Irish. Those with carelessness talk about the suspect in the precinct’s walls. Galatea can hear them talk about a storm on the horizon. And she almost wants to laugh, because they do not know that it is not a storm.

It is a war.

… … … … … …………….

“Karen…”

Galatea is approaching the golden woman.

Karen, even when slightly inebriated and slightly paranoid from the past danger and adrenaline of running for her life, is still beautiful in every sense. Sometimes, Galatea actually thinks that Murdock is blessed with being blind, because no soul should look Karen Page in the eye with the thought of being able to _survive_ her.

They could only hope to attempt to.

“Tea! Oh gosh, this is such a mess—”

Karen is blubbering on about the man who had tried shooting at both Grotto and herself even when they had driven away to safety. Galatea takes in the information thoughtfully, carefully. Karen informs the detective about how the shooting stopped shortly when they turned the corner and drove straight for the precinct.

“And this is him? The man who was at the club as well?” Galatea questions.

Grotto is a man of weaker constitutions, Galatea can already tell. He reminded her of a rat, to be honest. And him looking at her in his dazed fright, the wandering on his eyes as he takes in his even newer surroundings, just continues to further her observations.

The man is already searching for new thoughts of how he could possibly be killed even in the 15th precinct. Again, Galatea wants to laugh at the whole situation. Nobody is ready for the war that is to come.

And Galatea thinks that Grotto could very well be dead within days.

“I just thought that something else would happen, you know? Not getting chased and nearly shot. God, this night was just the three of us drinking and thinking of ways to hold off the bills,” Karen murmurs.

The blonde is glassy eyed. That is enough to strike some more humanity in Galatea. She offers better coffee from her own staff in her office to Karen. And without much thought, she hugs Karen too.

Galatea offers, “I know that car means a bit to you. I’ll call in a favor, get the windows fixed for you.”

Karen smiles, breathless. She is quick to hold onto Galatea with her own embrace. The two must have appeared odd, a compact detective sharing a hug with a taller, slim witness. But Galatea only closes her eyes and lets Karen hold on, tight and as long as she wished for the comfortable contact.

When the officers in charge of the first rotation comes in, Karen releases Galatea. Karen sniffles, accepts the tissues from Galatea and takes the paper cup full of coffee with her. Grotto is all ready to leave, uncomfortable with the intense stare down from Galatea and his general jitteriness of wanting to be safe.

Galatea sighs, “I’ll call Nelson for you. I’ll let you know when I hear from them but ask Mahoney if I’m not around.”

Karen waves back in her own farewell.

Galatea leaves to her apartment for the night. The exhaustion is deep in her bones. Her body craved for momentary rest. After she is settled in the lobby on the first floor, she sees the flash of a camera in the distance.

A bitterness is a close second to the chill in her veins. The lingering feeling of caressing claws at her fingertips another thing of instinct. The sharp nip at her bottom lip is but a small sting to her flesh. But nothing gets close.

Until she then finds that she is not alone in her apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a whole month, I've finally returned from the dreaded lands of writer's block!  
> Thank you for your patience and please enjoy the chapter. I already have half of the next chapter written up too, thank the holy beings of power that be!  
> Also, if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave any comment!  
> I hope you all thrive in your creativity and live freely in your stories, my lovelies!  
> PS. CAN SOMEONE TEACH ME HOW TO INDENT?


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